Archived: Admirals Reach Care Home

Updated 2 September 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.

The inspection took place on 21 July 2015 and was unannounced.

The inspection team consisted of two inspectors, a specialist professional advisor and an expert-by-experience. An expert-by-experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service. Their area of expertise was in nursing care and mental health.

We reviewed all the information we had available about the service including notifications sent to us by the provider. This is information about important events which the provider is required to send us by law. We received a Provider Information Return and a list of professionals who we could contact to seek their views of the service. The provider had sent in an action plan about the outstanding compliance action from the previous inspection. All of this information helped us to plan what areas to focus our attention on for the inspection.

During the inspection we spoke with 21 people who lived at the service and three people’s relatives. We also spoke with one health professional who knew the service well and we received written information from three health and social care professionals about the service. We used informal observations to evaluate people’s experiences and help us assess how their needs were being met and we observed how staff interacted with people and with each other. We spoke with the registered manager, deputy manager and 23 housekeeping, activities, care and nursing staff.

We looked at 12 people’s care records and examined information relating to the management of the service such as recruitment, staff support and training records and quality monitoring audits.

Updated 2 September 2015

This inspection took place on 21 July 2015 and was unannounced.

Admirals Reach provides nursing, personal care, respite, rehabilitation and dementia care services for up to 158 people in five houses on one site. On the day of our inspection, there were 128 people using the service. The rehabilitation unit (Drake) had closed and no-one was currently using this unit.

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.

At our last inspection we found a breach of regulation 21 because some of the records were not written clearly enough for staff to understand people’s changing needs. During this inspection, we found that actions had been taken by the registered manager to address this. Care files and daily records were now clearly written and reflected the care and support that people required and received.

There were sufficient staff who had been recruited safely with the skills and knowledge to provide care and support to people.

People’s health and emotional needs were assessed, monitored and met in order for them to live well. The service worked closely with relevant health care professionals. People received the support they needed to have a healthy diet that met their individual needs.

People were treated with kindness, respect and dignity by staff who knew them well and who listened to their views and preferences.

People were able to raise concerns and give their views and opinions and these were listened to and acted upon. Staff received guidance about people’s care from up to date information about their changing needs.

There was a strong management team who worked well together and were visible in the service. People were well cared for by staff who themselves were supported.

The management team had systems in place to check and audit the quality of the service. The views of people were taken into account to make improvements and develop the service.