- Care home
Archived: Sonia Lodge
Assessment report published 7 November 2025
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of inspection: This assessment took place between 8 and 19 September 2025. We visited the service on 8 and 16 September 20205. We found 8 breaches of the regulations in relation to safe care and treatment, dignity and respect, staff training, recruitment, environmental safety, person centred care, dealing with complaints and a continued breach relating to good governance. The service was previously rated required improvement but has now changed to inadequate. Sonia Lodge is a care home in Deal which supports older people living with dementia. At the time of the inspection there were 20 people living at the service. The service was registered to support a maximum of 28 people.
The support being provided to people was not always safe. People’s health was poorly monitored including where people were at risk of harm or becoming unwell. People were not always referred to other health care professionals when they should have been. When people had been referred to health care professionals their advice and directions had not always been followed. Medicines were not always safely managed.
There was a new staff team at the service as the provider no longer had a licence to sponsor staff from other countries. The provider did not provide evidence they had improved recruitment processes and continued to not recruit staff safely. They had not invested in staff training and skills and staff practices needed to be improved. The environment was not always clean or managed safely.
People’s care and treatment was not always well assessed and planned. Staff did not always communicate well with each other to ensure people’s care was effective. The records about people’s care were poor and did not support staff to provide safe and effective care for people. Some relatives told us they were not always well informed about the support people were provided.
The provider told us they had received no complaints. However, relatives told us they had complained about people’s support, and these had not been appropriately logged and responded to. We were not assured that the provider had identified and recorded all of the incidents or allegations of abuse which had occurred at the service.
The service was not well governed. Quality systems in place had not led to nor sustained improvement. There had been a lack of oversight at the service. The provider had not been at the service consistently and had left the service being managed day to day by inexperienced staff whilst the manager was away.
This service is being placed in special measures. The purpose of special measures is to ensure that services providing inadequate care make significant improvements. Special measures provide a framework within which we user our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of the care they provide.’
In instances where CQC has begun a process of regulatory action, we may publish this information on our website after any representations and/or appeals have been concluded, if the action has been taken forward.
People's experience of this service
People were not well supported to lead positive and dignified lives. Whilst we saw some examples of positive care, we also saw examples of poor care being delivered to people and people being left in undignified positions.
Relatives told us people often wore other people’s clothes and people were not always clean or supported to be well presented.
The environment smelled strongly of urine and was not well maintained for people to promote enjoyment, for example the garden was unkempt. People’s choices were not always promoted, and people were not always provided with the information they needed to support them to make decisions for themselves.
One relative said, “We are concerned now, we are flagging up all sort of things.” Another relative told us they felt their loved one was neglected at the home.