Archived: Chestnut Lodge Residential Home

Updated 5 July 2017

We undertook an unannounced inspection of Chestnut Lodge Residential Home on 02 May 2017. The inspection was prompted in part by information of concern that we had received about the safety of people living at the home. We also assessed the registered provider’s progress to address safety concerns identified at our last comprehensive inspection on 30 November and 01 December 2016. This inspection was conducted by one inspector. The team inspected the service against one of the five questions we ask about services: is the service Safe? We carried out this unannounced inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions.

As part of our inspection, we reviewed the information we already held about the provider and information we had received from commissioners of the service. Providers are required to notify the Care Quality Commission about specific events and incidents that occur, including serious injuries to people receiving care and any safeguarding matters. These help us to plan our inspection.

During our visit, we spoke with four people living at the home about their care and observed the care of other people living at the home. We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us.

As part of our inspection, we gathered feedback from four visiting professionals and four relatives of people living at the home. We spoke with three members of staff and the registered provider. We sampled three people’s care records, two staff files and records maintained by the service about risk management, staffing and the quality and safety of people’s care.

Updated 5 July 2017

We carried out an unannounced comprehensive inspection of this service on 30 November and 01 December 2016. After that inspection we received concerns in relation to the safety of the home and the areas of improvement that we had identified at our last inspection. As a result we undertook a focused inspection to look into those concerns and to assess the safety of the home. This report only covers our findings in relation to this topic. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Chestnut Lodge Residential Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk. At this inspection, we found that the registered provider had taken some action to improve the safety of the support people received, however the systems in place to ensure people were safe were not always robust and people did not always receive consistently safe support that was to their satisfaction.

The home is registered to provide personal care and accommodation for up to 15 older people. At the time of our inspection, there were ten people living at the home and four people having a respite stay at the home.

The registered provider had registered with the Care Quality Commission. The registered provider was not required to have a registered manager in place and they had chosen to manage the service as a ‘registered person’. 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 and relatives told us that they were safe at the home. We observed that most people were at ease and comfortable around staff and others, although some people expressed a lack of confidence in the support they received from some staff.

Staff were not consistently able to fully explain how they would recognise and report safeguarding concerns to promote people’s safety. We were informed that refresher safeguarding training had been planned to address this shortfall in staff knowledge.

People’s risks were not consistently managed safely and care plans did not always equip staff with a full understanding of the people’s individual risks and associated support needs. Incidents were not always addressed and investigated in line with the registered provider’s processes. Opportunities were missed to help minimise risks and future reoccurrences of incidents.

People were supported by sufficient numbers of staff at the home. People were supported to access the support of other health professionals to address concerns and changes to their care.

Improvements had been made in respect of medicines management at the home and people received safe support with this aspect of their care. The registered provider was making ongoing improvements to the health and safety of the home and had ongoing plans to continue to improve the quality and safety of the support people received.