Archived: Langley House

Updated 8 April 2017

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked 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.

We undertook an unannounced focused inspection on 16 March 2017. This inspection was done to check that improvements to meet legal requirements, planned by the provider after our comprehensive inspection on 5 October 2016, had been made. We inspected the service against one of the five questions we ask about services: Is the service safe? This is because the service was not meeting some legal requirements.

The inspection was undertaken by one inspector. During our inspection we spoke with one of the three people living in the home and two staff including the provider. We observed interaction between staff and people and reviewed documents; we looked at one person’s care plan in detail, medicine records, training information and policies and procedures in relation to the running of the home.

Before the inspection we looked at information provided by the local authority, contracts and purchasing (quality monitoring team). We also looked at information we hold about the service including previous reports, notifications, complaints and any safeguarding concerns. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to send us by law. We looked at the provider information return (PIR), which is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what they do well and any improvements they plan to make.

Updated 8 April 2017

Langley House is a large family home located in a residential area of Bexhill-on-Sea, within walking distance of the town centre. A large entrance area and lounge/dining room on the ground floor are used as communal rooms and people living there have access to the gardens to the side and front of the building.

The home is registered for eight people with mental health needs, but actually provides support for three people who are independent and require only minor prompting or reminding with personal care and medication.

This home is not required to have a registered manager as part of its conditions of registration. The provider is the registered person and they have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the home is run.

At the last inspection on 5 October 2016 we carried out an unannounced comprehensive inspection and found the provider was not meeting the regulation with regard to medication under the ‘safe’ question. The provider told us they would address the concern immediately.

We undertook this focused inspection on the 16 March 2017 to check that they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to that requirement. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Langley House on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

We found the provider had reviewed the management of medicines to ensure it supported people safely. There was a process in place for ordering, checking, receiving and storing medicines. Risk had been assessed to enable people to be responsible for their own medicines and records were kept to ensure they had taken them.

Langley House was a family environment with the provider living in the home with the three people they supported, although in a separate part of the building. The provider had been responsible for the home for over 25 years and their family had grown up within the care environment and were now working as staff. There had been no new staff employed at the home for several years and the provider had no plans to change the current staffing level.

People said they had the support they wanted. One person told us they were very happy living in the home and had been involved in decisions about the services provided. They said, “I have lived here for 21 years and am very happy. I will be going out later after dinner.”

Risk assessments had been completed to ensure people were supported safely to be independent and people said they felt safe and received the support they needed. Staff had attended safeguarding training. They demonstrated a good understanding of their responsibilities with regard to supporting people and the action they should take if they had any concerns.

A considerable amount of refurbishment had taken place. New lighting had been installed in the communal areas; improvements had been made to the kitchen people used and a separate dining room would be available to them when the work was completed.