- Care home
Marika House
Assessment report published 6 October 2025
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
We carried out this inspection from 19 August 2025 to 1 September 2025. The service is a residential care home providing support to people with a learning disability and autistic people. There were 7 people living in the home at the time of our inspection. We assessed this service due to receiving information of concern. We inspected 33 quality statements. This service had previously been rated good.
We found 2 breaches of the legal regulations in relation to person centred care and governance.
People were not supported to eat healthily and were not always engaged in meaningful activities. The provider’s internal monitoring systems failed to identify all of the concerns we found during this inspection and robust action had therefore not been taken to make improvements. The registered manager and provider were motivated to improve the service and started addressing these shortfalls during the inspection.
Where risk to people had been identified staff understood how to keep people safe. People were supported to have choice and control in some areas, could give feedback on their care, and were supported by staff who knew them well and treated them with kindness and respect. Medicines were stored, documented, and administered safely.
Staff were recruited safely and received appropriate training and supervision. Staff were trained to raise and respond to safeguarding concerns both internally and to external agencies.
The service learned from incidents and action was taken to ensure improvements were made where needed. The service was not always well maintained, however, areas for improvement had been identified and actions to rectify this were in progress. A new registered manager was in post and the provider had started taking action prior to and during our inspection to make improvements.
We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choice, independence, and good access to local communities which most people take for granted. We found people did not always receive care and support in accordance with the principles of this guidance.
People's experience of this service
We spoke with some people and their relatives and used observation to assess whether people received good care. We found people could benefit from being involved in more meaningful activities with staff both inside and outside of the home.
One person told us, they liked the staff and felt safe, they could make everyday choices, and their family could visit whenever they wanted.
During the assessment, we received mixed feedback from relatives. Some relatives told us they had concerns about what people were eating and the lack of meaningful activities. Relatives told us they were pleased with the actions the new registered manager had taken so far and were hopeful improvements would continue to be made.
One relative told us, “My relative is happy, and the new manager is making progress.” Another relative told us, “It’s a fabulous home and there are enough suitably trained staff.” Relatives also told us, staff were caring.