• Care Home
  • Care home

Hundens Park

Overall: Good read more about inspection ratings

Hundens Lane, Darlington, County Durham, DL1 1JF (01325) 366000

Provided and run by:
Barchester Healthcare Homes Limited

Latest inspection summary

On this page

Background to this inspection

Updated 15 December 2021

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.

As part of CQC’s response to care homes with outbreaks of COVID-19, we are conducting reviews to ensure that the Infection Prevention and Control practice was safe and the service was compliant with IPC measures. This was a targeted inspection looking at the IPC practices the provider has in place.

This inspection took place on 16 November 2021 and was unannounced.

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 15 December 2021

About the service

Hundens Park is a service providing personal and nursing care for up to 60 older people, some of whom may have dementia and behaviour that may at times be distressing. At the time of the inspection there were 42 people living at the service.

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

Infection control processes were embedded and staff were observed to understand and follow government guidance regarding the wearing of PPE and understood good infection control practice. Medicines were managed safely.

Processes to safeguard people from abuse were followed and risks were effectively reviewed and managed. Staffing levels were safe at the time of our visit but some staff raised concerns that at certain busy period sometimes it felt "stretched."

We made a recommendation the provider reviews deployment across the service to ensure the right staffing levels are in place at key times.

The service had recognised an area for improvement regarding mealtimes in relation to presentation and nutritional appropriateness. We saw they had addressed this via training, additional support and recruitment.

There was an interim management team at the service and staff we spoke with felt they could raise issues and concerns with them and stated they felt very supported by them. Some staff raised that they had not always felt supported previously.

Relatives we spoke with felt that communication with the service was generally good and they felt staff were caring, knowledgeable and kind.

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

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was Good (published 9 December 2017).

Why we inspected

The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about management support, food preparation and staffing levels. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.

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 coronavirus and other infection outbreaks effectively.

The overall rating for the service has remained at Good at this inspection.

We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the Well-Led section of this full report.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Hundens Park.

Follow up

We will return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.