Archived: Woodlands

Updated 27 April 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, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Our inspection took place on 2 and 4 March 2015 and was unannounced. The inspection was conducted by one inspector.

Before the inspection, we asked the provider to complete 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. They did not return a PIR and we took this

into account when we made the judgements in this report.

To plan our inspection we reviewed information we held about the home, this included notifications received from the provider about deaths, accidents/incidents, safeguarding alerts which they are required to send us by law.

On the day of our inspection there were 19 people living in the home, only three people were able to speak with us. The other 16 were unable to share their views verbally due to their communication needs so we observed how they were supported. We spoke with the three people who were able to share their views with us, three members of staff and the registered manager who is also the owner of the home. We looked at the care records for three people, the recruitment and training records for three members of staff and records used for the management of the service; for example, staff duty rosters, accident records and records used for auditing the quality of the service. After the inspection visit we undertook telephone calls to three relatives.

We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not communicate with us.

Updated 27 April 2015

The inspection took place on the 2 and 4 March 2015 and was unannounced. At our last inspection on the 4 April 2013 the regulations we inspected were met.

Woodlands is registered to provide accommodation and support for 19 older adults with dementia. On the day of our inspection there were 19 people living in the home and there was a registered manager in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission 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.

People we spoke with told us they felt safe living in the home and relatives confirmed they had no concerns with people’s safety. We found that people were happy and staff knew what actions to take where they had concerns about people being kept safe from harm.

We found that the provider did not have the appropriate systems in place to ensure staff received support through regular supervisions, staff meetings and regular up to date training. Training records showed that staff were not receiving training regularly to ensure their skills and knowledge was kept up to date.

We found that the provider was not meeting the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Staff we spoke with were not sufficiently knowledgeable to ensure where people lacked capacity their human rights would being protected. The provider also took no appropriate action to ensure where people lacked capacity an appropriate assessment was done and advice taken from the supervisory body as to whether people were being restricted and a Deprivation of Liberty Safeguard application was needed.

People told us that the meals were good and they enjoyed them, but they did not get a choice of meals. Our observations were that the menu was not displayed in a way to support people to make choices and it was not clear how people were involved in deciding the menu options.

We found that people were not always being encouraged to make decisions about the support they got. People told us how they decided daily when they got up and went to bed and the clothes they wore. But it was unclear how they participated in other elements of the running of the home, through meetings or other forums.

The provider did not take sufficient action to ensure people’s privacy and dignity was respected at all times. We found that bedroom doors did not all lock to offer people privacy and bedroom doors on the top floor of the home had glass panels which allowed people no privacy or dignity. The registered manager told us action would be taken to ensure people views and consent was sort as to how their privacy and dignity would be respected in the future. This would include the glass panels being covered.

The provider had systems in place so people were able to give their views by way of completing a questionnaire. We found no recorded evidence to show that people views were being sought through this process and how the information gained was being used to make improvements to the quality of the service provided.

We found that the provider’s assessment and care planning records did not accurately reflect people’s assessed needs and how they were being met consistently. This meant new staff would not know from people’s records what their needs were or how to meet them.