- Care home
Fryers House - Care Home with Nursing Physical Disabilities
Report from 2 June 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of assessment; 16 June 2025 to 24 July 2025. This assessment was carried out in response to information of concern we received about the service relating to safe care and treatment and staffing. Fryers House – Care Home with Nursing Physical Disabilities isa nursing home which provides personal care and nursing care to adults. At the time of our assessment 18 people were using the service. We undertook a comprehensive inspection and reviewed all 33 quality statements related to the 5 key questions, Is the service safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led?
We identified breaches of regulations relating to safe care and treatment, safeguarding, staffing, consent, person-centred care, recruitment and governance. The service had an inconsistent approach to risk management. They did not consistently assess risks to people's health and safety or always take appropriate action to mitigate identified risks. People’s care plans were not always sufficiently detailed to guide safe, effective and person-centred practice. Systems and processes to manage medicines safely were not effective. Consent was not consistently obtained following legislation and best practice. Leadership instability had impacted the service, resulting in inconsistent oversight and weakened risk management. Although governance arrangements were in place, they were not operated effectively to monitor and improve the quality of care.
We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance Care Quality Commission (CQC) follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it. We found the provider did not always meet the requirements of this guidance as people’shumanrightshad not always been upheld where restrictions had been placed on them, and they could not consent to those restrictions; people had not always had decisions made in line with current legislation where they lacked capacity or had fluctuating capacity.
Staff and leaders engaged openly and transparently throughout the assessment, demonstrating a commitment to learning and improvement. The provider had a detailed service improvement plan and was responsive to feedback throughout the assessment, taking action and identifying steps to address the concerns and strengthen their improvement plan. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.
People's experience of this service
People did not always receive person-centred care and had limited access to meaningful activities. Feedback from people and relatives was mixed. While some shared positive experiences and felt staff knew them well, concerns were raised about inconsistency in care, often dependent on which staff were providing support and their familiarity with people and the service.
Overall, there was a consensus from people and relatives that there had been a decline experienced in the quality of care and it was felt the instability in staffing and management had contributed to this.
Comments from people included, “I don’t get out much”, “Quality of care not so good last couple of months” and “It’s the people who can’t communicate I am concerned about, I can tell staff if they are not doing it the way I want”, “If I needed to complain I know who to go to” and “I have made a few friends here and my room is very personalised.”
Comments from relatives included, “She is not getting the care that she deserves”, “She has become unmotivated and just down and it is sad and hard to see”, “When I go to visit … I see the staff in the lounge … and they are just sitting there on their phones”, “Staff turnover causes problems for residents because it is not a safe environment for them, no stability” and “They listen to her, but they don’t help her, if they did things would be different for her and it is not.”
Positive comments included, “The staff are always, chatting, smiling and trying to communicate or make some conversation with him”, “They stop by and say hi, there is interaction going on, they do interact with him” and “He seems to be happy to me.”