• Care Home
  • Care home

Archived: Russell Court

Overall: Requires improvement read more about inspection ratings

Overfield Road, Russells Hall, Dudley, West Midlands, DY1 2NY

Provided and run by:
Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council

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Background to this inspection

Updated 22 June 2016

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.

This inspection took place on 25 April 2016 and was unannounced. The inspection team consisted of one inspector 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.

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. The form was completed and returned so we were able to take the information into account when we planned our inspection. We reviewed the information we held about the service. Providers are required by law to notify us about events and incidents that occur; we refer to these as ‘notifications’. We looked at the notifications the provider had sent to us. We also contacted the local authority who monitor and commission services, for information they held about the service. We used the information we had gathered to plan what areas we were going to focus on during our inspection.

We spoke with 11 people, five relatives, seven care staff, two senior care officers, an occupational therapist, a social worker and the cook. We looked at the care records for four people. We looked at the way people’s medicines were managed, staff training records and the manager’s quality monitoring audits. In addition we used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experiences of people.

Overall inspection

Requires improvement

Updated 22 June 2016

This inspection took place on 25 April 2016 and was unannounced. At our last inspection in June 2013 the service was meeting the regulations of the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Russell’s Court provides accommodation for up to 32 older people who require personal care. On the day of our inspection there were 32 people living there. There were 9 people living at this service on a permanent basis and 23 people were using this service for rehabilitation and respite following their discharge from hospital.

The previous registered manager left the service in December 2015 and they have submitted an application to cancel their registration with the Care Quality Commission. The service is currently being managed by an acting manager.

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 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

People were positive about the care they received and those people we spoke with told us they felt safe. People told us that staff knew them well and supported them in their preferred way.

The staff had a clear awareness and understanding of potential abuse and knew how to protect people from the risk of harm. There were enough skilled and experienced staff to meet people’s needs.

Risk assessments and care plans had been developed with the involvement of people. Staff had the relevant information on how to minimise identified risks to ensure people were supported in a safe way. People had equipment in place when this was needed, so that staff could assist them safely. Although staff sought people’s consent before providing support they were not fully aware of which people were subject to deprivation of liberty authorisations.

People were treated with kindness, compassion and respect and staff promoted people’s independence and right to privacy. People were supported to maintain good health; we saw that staff alerted health care professionals if they had any concerns about their health. People knew how to make a complaint and were confident that their complaint would be fully investigated and action taken if necessary.

The provider had not kept us informed about changes to the management of the service. We had not received all of the notifications that the provider must notify us about. People described the management team of the home as approachable and they said they felt the service was well managed. Arrangements were in place to assess and monitor the quality of the service, so that actions could be taken to improve the service provided.