- Care home
North Court Care Home
Report from 3 June 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
This assessment was undertaken between 17 June 2025 and 4 July 2025. North Court is a nursing home providing accommodation for persons who require nursing or personal care and is registered for 65 people. At the time of our assessment there were 48 people living at the service.
The service supports older people including those with nursing needs and those living with dementia.
The assessment was undertaken by two inspectors on day 1 and 2 and one inspector on day 3. A medicines inspector and Expert by Experience also visited the service as part of the assessment. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service, and they spoke to people about their experience of living at North Court.
The inspection was prompted in part by notification of an incident following which a service user died. This incident is subject to further investigation by CQC as to whether any regulatory action should be taken. As a result, this inspection did not examine the circumstances of the incident. However, the information shared with CQC about the incident indicated potential concerns and this inspection examined those risks.
This was the first assessment for this newly registered service following a change of provider and CQC registration.Maven healthcare took over the running of North Court in January 2024. As this was the first assessment since their registration, we carried out a full assessment. The location was rated Requires Improvement, under the previously registered provider.
Whilst overall we found an improving picture we did identify shortfalls in a number of areas including the recording and monitoring of risks, medicines and the deployment of staff. The shortfalls indicated that practice was not always consistent and changes underway needed to be further embedded and sustained.
The new provider was refurbishing the service and was working on a range of initiatives to drive change. A new manager had recently been appointed to lead on the changes. This included improving relationships with health professionals and creating new systems to identify and monitor people’s wellbeing. Staff morale had improved, and staff were positive about the investment in the service and the approachability of the new management team.
The provider was responsive to our feedback and shared the steps that they were taking to evidence actions taken.
People's experience of this service
Overall, we received positive feedback from people and relatives about living at North Court. People told us that staff were kind and helpful and knew them well.
We received some inconsistent feedback about the availability of staff, however most people told us that staff were available to support them when they needed it. We observed staff were available in the communal areas and were attentive to people’s needs. Some people had to wait for assistance at lunchtime, but the provider told us that they intended to review the organisation of mealtimes and how staff were deployed. Some changes had been introduced by the second day of our inspection.
The quality of the food had previously been identified as an issue, but people told us that this was improving, and the meals served on the days of our inspection were varied and looked appetizing.
The service was well integrated into the local community and people told us that they enjoyed going into the town and accessing the regular rickshaw rides. The numbers of activity staff had recently increased and people spoke highly about what was on offer and the efforts made by activity staff to provide interesting things for them to do.
The service is currently being refurbished and whilst people told us that efforts were made to ensure that this did not impact directly on them, we did note that many of the rooms and bathrooms did not have any identifying features to support people to orientate themselves around the service. The provider told us that they would act to address this and we saw some changes had been made on the third day of our inspection. The planned refurbishment will ultimately improve people’s experience and comfort.