About the service: Kenrick Centre is a care home that provides personal care for up to 64 people. At the time of the inspection 50 people lived at the home. The accommodation was established over two floors. On the ground floor there was a residential unit where 25 people lived, and on the first floor there was an enablement service where 25 people stayed at the time of our inspection visits. The aim of the enablement service was to prepare people for independent living following a stay in hospital or life changing event. People stayed at the enablement unit for approximately 4-6 weeks.The Kenrick Centre also supplied the local community with day centre facilities, a café and a gym which were available for people to use. CQC do not regulate these types of service, so our inspection did not look at this aspect of the Kenrick Centre.
People's experience of using this service
•Risks which affected people’s health and wellbeing were not always documented and staff did not always have adequate information to manage and mitigate against risks to people.
•Medicines were not stored or managed safely, which put people at risk.
•Infection control procedures required improvement to ensure people were protected from the risk of infection and cross contamination.
•Staff did not always receive up to date information and training, to ensure they knew how to support people safely.
•Systems of audits did not effectively identify where improvements were needed.
•The leadership and governance of the service required improvement to ensure lessons were learnt, and improvements were embedded and sustained into practice, so that people received a good quality service.
•Care records were not always up to date, and did not always show who should be consulted about decisions regarding people’s care and finances.
•People were not always able to participate in activities, interests and hobbies that met their individual needs and choices.
•People told us they felt safe with staff who supported them.
•There were enough staff to meet people’s assessed needs across both units.
•Staff had completed safeguarding training and knew what to do if they were concerned about people’s well-being.
•People were supported to make daily living choices such as what they wanted to eat, and where they wanted to spend their time.
•Staff were aware people’s needs could change, and understood when to seek advice and involve other health care professionals and services when needed.
•Staff knew people well, and knew their preferred ways of communicating, to assist people to make choices.
•Staff encouraged and supported people to be as independent as possible.
•There was a registered manager in post on each of the units at the centre.
•Feedback from people and staff was sought to identify where improvements could be made in the delivery of service.
Rating at last inspection: Requires Improvement. The last report for Kenrick Centre was published on 16 January 2018. CQC had inspected this service on four previous occasions, a rating of Requires Improvement had been awarded on all the previous inspections.
Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection based on the rating at the last inspection. The inspection was also prompted in part by notification of a potential serious incident. At the time of our inspection, we were conducting an ongoing investigation. Whilst this inspection did not examine the circumstances of the incident, we considered the provider’s management of risks; staff training, and quality assurance procedures. We may review our findings in more detail when the ongoing investigation is concluded.
Enforcement: The service met the characteristics of Inadequate in two key questions of safe and well-led, with Requires Improvement in effective, caring and responsive.
Follow up: We will continue to monitor the service closely and discuss ongoing concerns with the provider. The overall rating for this registered provider is 'Inadequate'. This means that it has been placed into 'Special Measures' by CQC.
The purpose of special measures is to:
• Ensure that providers found to be providing inadequate care significantly improve.
• Provide a framework within which we use our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and work with, or signpost to, other organisations in the system to ensure improvements are made.
• Provide a clear timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of care they provide or we will seek to take further action, for example cancel their registration.
If not enough improvement is made within this timeframe so that there is still a rating of inadequate for any question or overall, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures to begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will lead to cancelling their registration or to varying the terms of their registration within six months if they do not improve.
This service will continue to be kept under review and, if needed, could be escalated to urgent enforcement action. Where necessary, another inspection will be conducted within a further six months, and if there is not enough improvement so there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall, we will act to prevent the provider from operating this service. This will lead to cancelling their registration or to varying the terms of their registration.
Full information about CQC's regulatory response to the more serious concerns found during inspections is added to reports after any representations and appeals have been concluded. We will have contact with the provider following this report being published to discuss how they will make changes to ensure the service improves their rating to at least Good.