Archived: The Harriet Nanscawen Nursing Home

Updated 15 June 2018

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 2 May 2018 and was unannounced.

This was a routine comprehensive inspection carried out by one adult social care inspector, a pharmacist 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.

During the inspection we spoke with eight people living at the service and four relatives. We also spoke with the registered provider, two nurses, cook, administrator, housekeeping staff and five care staff. Following the inspection we sought feedback from three healthcare professionals and had responses from one.

We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return (PIR). This is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We also reviewed other information we held about the service. This included previous inspection reports, safeguarding alerts and statutory notifications. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to send us by law.

We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a specific way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us due to their dementia.

We reviewed information about people’s care and how the service was managed. These included: three people's care files; three staff files which included recruitment records of the staff recruited since our last inspection; staff induction, training and supervision records; quality monitoring systems such as audits, complaints; incident and accident reporting and minutes of meetings.

Updated 15 June 2018

The Harriet Nanscawen Nursing Home is a residential care home with nursing for 23 people with dementia and conditions associated with old age and frailty. The service is set over two floors with communal lounges and dining areas all on the ground floor.

At our last inspection we rated the service good. We did rate one key area-safe as requires improvement. This was because the service did not have enough slings to help prevent infection control and people did not have personal evacuation plans. The registered manager assured us these matters would be dealt with swiftly and she provided information to show they had resolved these areas. At this inspection we found the evidence continued to support the rating of good and there was no evidence or information from our inspection and on-going monitoring that demonstrated serious risks or concerns.

This inspection report is written in a shorter format because our overall rating of the service has not changed since our last inspection.

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Why the service is rated as good.

People said they enjoyed living at the service and felt safe and well cared for. Comments included

“This place has a very good reputation - one of the best smaller ones” and “They are very good here with the care

People were supported to maintain their independence and live fulfilling lives doing the things they enjoyed and being encouraged to try new things. Some people did comment there were no outing organised.

The home had a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the CQC 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. The registered manager had returned to work at the service in the summer of 2017 to retake up the role of manager. They had reapplied to CQC and had been re-registered as the registered manager in February 2018.

Staff were caring and knowledgeable about people’s needs, wishes and preferred routines. This helped them to plan personalised care. People, their families and visiting healthcare professionals were positive about the care and support people received. This considered their changing needs and healthcare needs.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. People told us they could choose what time they got up and where they wished to spend their day.

Care and support was person centred and well planned. Staff had good training and support to do their job safely and effectively, although training records did not reflect all the training which had been completed.

Risk assessments were in place for each person. These identified the correct action to take to reduce the risk as much as possible in the least restrictive way. People received their medicines safely and on time. Accidents and incidents were carefully monitored, analysed and reported upon.

There were effective staff recruitment and selection processes in place. Staff understood about how to keep people protected and who to report abuse to.

Quality assurance processes and audits helped to ensure that the quality of care and support as well as the environment was closely monitored. This included seeking the views of people and their relatives.

We have made recommendations in relation to some records being more robustly maintained and kept up to date.

Further information is in the detailed findings below