Athol House - Care Home Physical Disabilities

Updated 3 August 2023

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection team included 1 inspector and a member of the CQC medicines team.

Service and service type

Athol House is a 'care home' for people with learning disabilities. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care as a single package under one contractual agreement. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

At the time of the inspection, the service had a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) 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 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

Notice of inspection

This inspection was unannounced.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return. This is information providers are required to send us with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with 4 people who used the service. We spoke with 6 members of staff including the registered manager, team leader, activities worker, care and domestic staff. We reviewed a range of records, including three people's care records and multiple medicine records. We looked at 2 staff files in relation to recruitment and staff supervision. A variety of records relating to the management of the service, including policies and procedures were also reviewed.

We continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence found. We looked at data regarding staffing and quality assurance records. We contacted five healthcare professionals and received feedback from three professionals. We spoke to two staff members and four relatives.

Updated 3 August 2023

About the service

Athol House is a care home for people with learning disabilities. Athol House accommodates 21 people living with a physical or learning disability. At the time of our inspection 15 people were living at the service.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

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 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.

Right Support: The provider delivered care in a way that maximised people’s choice, control and independence. However, although the provider delivered an individualised level of care, we found the layout of the building did not optimise people’s independence. The building was a large home and we could not see evidence that the home met the needs of people living with a learning disability. The provider considered risks to people’s health and safety and had appropriate risk management guidelines in place to mitigate these. Lessons were learned when things went wrong. Accidents and incidents were recorded and investigated as required. The provider managed people’s medicines safely. Records of administration were kept when the provider administered both oral and topical medicines and care staff had a good level of understanding of their responsibilities in all areas.

Right Care: The provider delivered care in a way that was person-centred and promoted people’s dignity, privacy and human rights. People were supported in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. The provider had appropriate systems in place to protect people from the risk of abuse. The provider ensured there were enough suitably qualified and experienced staff in place to support people. The provider had appropriate infection control systems and processes in place.

Right Culture: The ethos, values, attitudes and behaviours of leaders and care staff ensured people using services led confident, inclusive and empowered lives. The provider engaged people in the running of the service and had effective systems of audit in place. The provider understood their obligation to be open and honest and promoted a positive culture that achieved good outcomes for people. The provider worked in partnership with other multi- disciplinary professionals.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Rating at last inspection and update: The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 21 April 2021) and there were breaches of regulation 12 (Safe Care and Treatment) and regulation 19 (Good Governance). The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the Safe key question. We look at this in all care home inspections even if no concerns or risks have been identified. This is to provide assurance that the service can respond to COVID-19 and other infection outbreaks effectively.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

The overall rating for the service has changed from required improvement to good based on the findings of this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Athol House - Care Home Physical Disabilities on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.