Archived: The Manor House

We found that the provider did not have any maintenance schedules, risk assessments or action plans which detailed how and when the required work would be completed.

During the inspection we spoke to the provider, the registered manager, three staff members and three people who lived at the home. We also spent time observing the day to day functioning of the home. We saw that staff supported people in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere.

We saw that each person living at the home had a care plan and risk assessments completed. These supported staff with the care delivery. We asked three people living at the home about the quality of their care, all were complimentary. One person said: 'The care staff are absolutely marvellous'.

The action plan we received from the provider advised that the areas requiring attention in relation to the premises and equipment would be completed by November 2013. We found, that although a refurbishment programme had commenced, there were areas of the home still requiring attention.

We involve people in our inspections that have experience of social care services; we call them experts by experience. With the expert by experience we spoke to the registered manager, deputy manager, three staff members, six people who used the service and six family members.

In order to support staff with care delivery each person living at the home had a care plan and risk assessments completed. We asked people living at the home and family members about the quality of the care at the home, all were complimentary. One person told us that the manager came around every day to ask how they were. Another person living at the home said, 'The staff are very good and very friendly'.

Systems were in place to ensure that staff had the necessary knowledge, understanding and support for safeguarding vulnerable adults.

There was on-going development to the systems for checking the quality of the service provided at The Manor House. However the provider and registered manager did not have systems in place to ensure equipment in the home was maintained and safe for use. We also found, in some areas, the premises had not been adequately maintained.

We spoke with three people who lived at the home, four staff members and the manager. We saw positive interactions between staff and people living at the home. The staff we spoke with said improvements had been made to the environment and the systems in place to manage people's care. One person living at the home said, 'The staff are good to me, can't fault any of them, the night staff too'.

We looked at two care plans. We found the information in the care plans was easily accessible and gave the appropriate information to staff to enable them to deliver personal care. However when we saw there had been a recent change to a person's needs this had not been reflected in the care plan.

There were systems in place to notify CQC and the local authority regarding specific incidents and concerns of suspected abuse.

We looked at the process for checking the quality of the service provided at the home. We found some improvements had been made. The process for recording incidents had been improved however the monitoring processes in the home were not always robust.

All the people we spoke with confirmed that staff were polite. One person said, 'Staff are always respectful they knock my door before they come in'. People were given choices of daily living for example when they got up, and what they ate at mealtimes. We did not see that people's views were always sought when decisions about the home were being taken, for example decoration or activity planning.

We looked at care plans, and asked staff about how they provided care. We found the information in the care plans was easily accessible and gave the necessary information to staff to enable them to deliver personal care.

Staff told us that training had been undertaken in a number of areas. It was difficult to see from training records what had been completed and what was outstanding. Not all staff could tell us when they had completed training.

We looked at the process for monitoring the quality of the service provided at the home. We found some improvements in the monitoring of quality had been made. The process for recording incidents had been improved however the monitoring of incidents was not robust.