Archived: Meadowcroft Residential Care Home

Updated 1 May 2025

Date of assessment: 8 May to 6 June 2025. The service is a residential care home providing support to people with a learning disability, and or autistic people. We found 4 breaches of regulations relating to person-centred care, safety, consent, and governance.

We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted.

Right support: The model of care and setting did not maximize people’s choice, control and independence. Risks were not assessed and mitigated to help keep people safe. People were not given information in an accessible way to support choice and decision-making.

Right care: Care was not person-centred and did not promote people’s dignity, privacy and human rights. Whilst staff treated people kindly, people were impacted by significant provider failings.

Right culture: The ethos, values, attitudes and behaviours of leaders did not ensure people led confident, inclusive and empowered lives. The provider failed to ensure meaningful consultation with people about changes they were making to the service.

In instances where CQC has decided to take civil or criminal enforcement action against a provider, we will publish this information on our website after any representations and/or appeals have been concluded. This service is being placed in special measures. The purpose of special measures is to ensure that services providing inadequate care make significant improvements. Special measures provide a framework within which we use our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of the care they provide.

Updated 1 May 2025

Whilst some people we spoke with expressed they were happy with their care, our assessment found elements of the care did not meet the expected standards. We also carried out observations where people could not tell us about their experience. We received mixed feedback from people using the service, or those important to them, with both positive and negative comments. We were told staff were kind, caring and committed to their roles. This included the long-standing registered manager. A person told us, “I feel safe” and “The staff are nice”. Another person’s relative told us, “I have no issues with the home whatsoever and feel that [person] is very well looked after.” However, significant building works were underway at the time of our assessment, and we found this was impacting on people’s safety and quality of life. A relative said, “I feel the home is safe, the doors are locked, I’m questioned by staff who don’t know me and am always asked to sign the visitors’ book. I believe there is external lighting. However, I have concerns since the building works have commenced.” This decision had been made at provider level. There was a lack of consultation with people and those close to them, to ensure the impact had been fully considered and addressed, and care plans updated as required. A person’s relative told us, “I haven’t seen the care plan and don’t get involved in that apart from getting a call from social services about once a year to see how things are going. Other than that, I leave the care plan stuff to the home.” We also received concerns not all legal requirements for decision making had been followed.