Archived: Forest Drive Residential Home

Updated 20 July 2015

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Before our inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service. This included the last inspection report for 25 April 2014. We contacted the local authority contracts and commissioning team that had placements at the home. We also reviewed notifications, safeguarding alerts and monitoring information from the local authority.

This was an unannounced inspection. We visited the home on 15 and 18 June 2015 and spoke with four people living at the home and four relatives. We also spoke with the registered manager, the deputy manager, four carers and the cook. We observed care and support in communal areas and also looked at some people’s bedrooms and bathrooms. We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a specific way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us. We looked at nine care files, staff duty rosters, a range of audits, complaints folder, minutes for various meetings, staff training matrix, accidents and incidents book, safeguarding folder, six staff files, activities timetable, five medicine records, health and safety folder, food menus, and policies and procedures for the home.

The inspection team consisted of two inspectors, a dementia specialist and an expert by experience, who had experience with older people with dementia. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of service.

Updated 20 July 2015

We inspected Forest Drive Residential Home on 15 and 18 June 2015. This was an unannounced inspection. At the last inspection in April 2014 the service was found to be meeting the regulations we looked at.

Forest Drive Residential Home provides accommodation for up to 19 older people who have dementia care needs. There were 13 people living at the service when we visited.

There was a registered manager at the service at the time of our inspection. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act and associated Regulations about how the service is run. The culture was not always open and transparent. There was a registered manager in post and a clear management structure. This included a deputy manager. Some staff we spoke with felt the registered manager was not always open and transparent with themselves or other staff. We made a recommendation about this.

We found the provider had not sent us any statutory notifications for people authorised for Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS). During the course of this inspection we found that 12 people had been authorised for DoLS and CQC had not been sent notifications of this.

Risks were identified and plans in place to monitor and reduce risks. People had access to relevant health professionals when they needed them. Medicines were stored and administered safely. People’s personal care needs were well attended to, but there was less emphasis on meeting people’s social and emotional needs. This was particularly important for those living with dementia. We made a recommendation about this.

Staff undertook training and received one to one supervision to help support them to provide effective care. The registered manager and staff we spoke with had a good understanding of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS). MCA and DoLS is law protecting people who are unable to make decisions for themselves or whom the state has decided their liberty needs to be deprived in their own best interests.

The experiences of people who lived at the home were positive. People told us they felt safe living at the home, staff were kind and compassionate and the care they received was good. We found staff had a good understanding of their responsibility with regard to safeguarding adults.

People told us they liked the food provided and we saw people were able to choose what they ate and drank. People had access to health care professionals as appropriate.

The service had various quality assurance and monitoring mechanisms in place. These included surveys, audits and staff and resident meetings.

We found one breach of the Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009.You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of this report.