Background to this inspection
Updated
27 May 2015
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 23 and 30 January 2015, and was unannounced. The inspection team was made up of two inspectors.
We reviewed all the information we held about the provider. We looked at the notifications that the provider had sent us. A notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send us by law. We also contacted health and social care professionals who regularly visited the people who live in the home. We received feedback from two health care professionals.
During our inspection we carried out observations and used the Short Observation Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a specific way of observing care to help us understand the experiences of people who could not talk to us due to their complex needs.
We spoke with six people who lived in the home and the relatives of two people. We spoke with the manager of the home, nine members of the care team, four team leaders, a member of the occupational therapy team, a visiting chiropodist and the head of service. We reviewed the care records of seven people including those we observed as having complex needs, and training records for all the staff. We also reviewed how the quality of service provided was monitored and managed.
Updated
27 May 2015
This unannounced inspection was carried out on the 23 and 30 January 2015.
The home provides accommodation and personal care for up to 42 older people some of whom were living with dementia and learning disabilities. The home also offered a rehabilitation service for up to seven people. At the time of the inspection there were 38 people living in the home.
The service has a registered 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 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
People were not protected from avoidable risks. Risk assessments were carried out and reviewed regularly, but staff were not always aware of their contents. Medicines were managed safely, but
people were not always supported to access other health and social care professionals when required.
There was not a variety of choices available on the menus and people were not supported to have sufficient food and drinks to meet their dietary needs.
People and their families were involved in the decisions about their care. The care plans were reviewed and updated regularly, but staff were not always aware of their contents.
People were supported to maintain their relationships with their family members and friends, but they were not supported to pursue their interests and hobbies.
The provider had effective recruitment processes in place, although there was not sufficient numbers of staff employed so that people received consistent care.
The staff had appropriate training. However they were not effectively supervised and supported to develop their skills and knowledge. Staff’s morale was very low and they felt that they were not valued or listened to.
Staff understood their roles in relation to the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS).
Staff were not always caring, kind and compassionate and did not always care for people in a manner that promoted their privacy and dignity.
The home was not managed in an inclusive manner.
The provider had a system in place to assess, review and evaluate the quality of service provision, but this had not been effective in identifying shortfalls in the quality of care.
During this inspection we identified a number of breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.