Archived: Cliftonville Residential Home

Updated 23 January 2015

This unannounced inspection was conducted by an inspector of the Care Quality Commission and an Expert by Experience. An Expert-by-Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service. The Expert had experience in caring for someone with dementia.

Before the inspection, the provider completed a Provider Information Return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We reviewed historical data that we held about safeguarding and other incidents happening in the service that the provider is required to tell us about. We contacted the local authority and reviewed the information we asked the provider to send to us.

During the visit, we spoke with six people living at the home, two relatives, five care staff, two ancillary staff and the registered manager. Not everyone who used the service was able to communicate verbally with us. We therefore spent some time observing how staff delivered care to people, reviewed people’s care plans and other relevant information to help us understand people’s care and support needs.

We looked around the premises and observed care practices throughout the day. We also 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 records related to people’s individual care and to the running of the home, including service user quality assurance survey questionnaire, staff recruitment and supervision records.

This report was written during the testing phase of our new approach to regulating adult social care services. After this testing phase, inspection of consent to care and treatment, restraint, and practice under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) was moved from the key question ‘Is the service safe?’ to ‘Is the service effective?’

The ratings for this location were awarded in October 2014. They can be directly compared with any other service we have rated since then, including in relation to consent, restraint, and the MCA under the ‘Effective’ section. Our written findings in relation to these topics, however, can be read in the ‘Is the service safe’ sections of this report.

Updated 23 January 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 and to pilot a new inspection process being introduced by CQC which looks at the overall quality of the service.

This was an unannounced inspection.

At the last inspection in October 2013, we found there were no breaches in the legal requirements for the areas we looked at.

Cliftonville Residential Home provides residential care for up to 20 older people most of whom have dementia. The home had a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service and shares the legal responsibility for meeting the requirements of the law; as does the provider.

The CQC is required by law to monitor the operation of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) and to report on what we find. We saw that there were policies and procedures in relation to the MCA and DoLS to ensure that people who could make decisions for themselves were protected. We saw from the records we looked at that where people lacked the capacity to make decisions about something, best interest meetings were held.

People’s health care needs were assessed, and care was planned and delivered in a consistent way. We looked at eight people’s care records and found that the information and guidance provided to care staff was detailed and clear. During our observations throughout the day we saw that care staff clearly knew how to support people in a way that the person wanted to be supported. People at nutritional risk were supported to have a sufficient quantity to eat and drink.

Care staff respected people’s privacy and dignity, for example by knocking on the person’s door, asking for permission before providing any personal care to people and using curtains or privacy screens.

Other records we looked at evidenced that people were supported to complain or raise any concerns if they needed to. The complaints procedure was available to people in a format that they could use.

The provider had a robust recruitment process in place. Records we looked at confirmed that staff started work in the home after all recruitment checks had been satisfactorily completed. Staff we spoke with told us that they had not been offered employment until these checks had been confirmed.

We found that the provider assessed the quality of service that it provided and involved the people who lived there where possible, their families, social workers, health care professionals and others.