- Care home
Archived: The Chestnuts
Report from 18 March 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of Assessment: 25 March 2025 to 15 April 2025. The service is a residential care home providing support to older people some of whom are living with dementia. The home has four units, each one with a separate dining and lounge area. Each person’s room had en-suite facilities. People had access to a garden area, however, this was not well used as it was not well maintained. At the time of the assessment one of the four units was not occupied.
The provider was previously in breach of the legal regulations in relation to safe care and treatment, safeguarding and good governance. The provider was required to send us an action plan telling us how they would improve and by when. We undertook this assessment to check they had followed their action plan and to confirm they now met legal requirements. At this assessment, we found the provider was in continued breach of safe care and treatment and good governance. In addition, we found one new breach of the legal regulations in relation to informing CQC of events they were required to notify to us. We found improvements were found in safeguarding, the provider was no longer in breach of this regulation.
People were not routinely protected from potential harm, risks were not always identified and mitigated in a timely manner. People were at increased risk of infection due to poor hand hygiene and inappropriate storage of staff clothes and bags. Safe medicine practices were not promoted. Records were not always accurate or well-maintained. Governance systems had not identified or addressed areas for improvement. The service failed to notify us of incidents which they were required to.
We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to some of the concerns found at this assessment. In instances where CQC have decided to take civil or criminal enforcement action against a provider, we will publish this information on our website after any representations and/ or appeals have been concluded.
People's experience of this service
We spent time speaking with people while at the service and made telephone calls to relatives after the site visit.We received mixed feedback from people about the quality of their care although the majority of it was positive, with both people and their relatives confirming they felt safe living at The Chestnuts, and felt there were enough staff to support them. However, we received feedback and comments about the high percentage of agency staff working in the home.
People and relatives told us positive things about the opportunity for activities both in the home and in the local community. People spoke highly of the staff, and felt they were caring.
However, people and their relatives were consistent in their feedback about the management of the home. Although they were aware there had been a number of recent changes in management, they advised us they had little interaction with management or told us communication could be better improved by management. We have provided this feedback to the provider for this to be considered for any future appointments of senior staff.