St Mary's Residential Care Home

Ratings

• Overall

  Requires improvement

• Safe

  Requires improvement

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Requires improvement

Our view of the service

We carried out our assessment between 2 March and 20 March 2026.St Mary’s Residential Home is a care home providing accommodation and personal care for up to29 people. The service supports people over the age of 65 and people living with dementia.

We carried out our inspection due to concerns we received about the service.

We found a lack of effective governance, oversight and monitoring of the service. Governance processes did not identify the issues which we found during this assessment.For example, not referring a person’s unexplained bruising to safeguarding, people using emollient cream did not all have a risk assessment,the use of stair gates on communal stairs were not risk assessed, the unsafe storage of gas cylinders in the service’s garden, and staff did not always seek medical advice following unwitnessed falls.This put people at risk of harm. We found no one had been harmed. Quality assurance systems and processes were not effectively implemented to ensure safety and drive change.These concerns constituted 1 breach in the regulation relating to good governance.

However, we found staff knew people well, spoke positively about their roles and felt supported by the leadership team. We observed staff being respectful and kind to people.

The provider had been working to improve the service with support from the local authority,and we saw changes had started to be made. The service did not have a manager in place at the beginning of our assessment;the new manager joined during our assessment.

The provider accepted feedback from this assessment and took immediate steps to affect change where required.

People's experience of this service

Not everyone at St Mary’s Residential Home,could tell us about their care experience, so we carried out structured observations. We saw staff treat people kindly and with respect.

Relatives told us that they felt their relatives were kept safe and they were positive about the skills and knowledge of the care staff. One relative told us, “Staff are very attentive with the residents. There is a special bond and personal relationship between staff and residents.”

Another relative told us, “It is a homely comfortable old building. There are pictures on the walls, and the carers know us all personally.”