Archived: Brantwood Hall Care Home

Updated 17 May 2016

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 over two days on 29 June and 2 July 2015 and was unannounced on the first day.

The inspection team consisted of five adult social care inspectors, one specialist advisor whose background was nursing and one Expert by Experience whose experience was in older people’s services. An expert-by-experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

We spoke with 17 people who lived at the home and four relatives/visitors. We spoke with eight staff and the registered manager. We spoke with one district nurse.

We looked at eight care records. We also saw other documentation showing how the home assessed the quality of care including accidents and incidents, maintenance logs and action plans stemming from visits by external teams such as infection control and the local authority.

Updated 17 May 2016

The inspection of Brantwood Hall Care Home took place on 29 June 2015 and was unannounced. We visited for a second day, on 2 July and this was announced There was a registered manager in post who was away on holiday on the first day of the inspection. However, there was a deputy manager and home administrator who were in charge of the running of the home.

The service was inspected in February 2015 and found to be in breach of 11 regulations.

Brantwood Hall Care Home is in a quiet residential area of Wakefield. The home provides accommodation for up to 60 older people. The home consists of two separate houses, numbers 12 and 14, located in the same grounds.

Staff had a good knowledge of how to ensure people were safeguarded from abuse.

Staff recruitment was robust and all vetting was in place to ensure staff were suitable to work in the home.

Staff understood their roles and responsibilities and demonstrated good teamwork. However, there were not enough staff available to attend to people in a timely manner.

Individual risk assessments for people’s care were not in place.

Many staff had undertaken regular mandatory training, but lacked training in specialist areas such as dementia care, pressure care and healthy eating. Staff lacked knowledge of the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005 and the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS).

Medications were given safely on the whole but there were some minor issues with the recording of warfarin and the storage of unused medicines to be returned.

People enjoyed their meals and there were much improved opportunities for people to drink regularly. Staff replenished people's drinks frequently and reminded them to drink in the warm weather. Monitoring and recording of people's food and fluid intake was still an area to improve.

We noticed an improved quality of staff interaction with people since our last visit and staff were respectful and caring in their approach on the whole. People told us they felt safe and happy, although there were few activities for them to be engaged with in a meaningful way.

We saw the provider had responded positively to recommendations made at the last inspection and those made by partner agencies such as the local authority and the infection control team.

Although there was considerable work to be done, there was evidence of action being taken to secure improvements. However, audits and quality assurance systems were not robustly in place to ensure the quality of the provision.

You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.