We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

One inspector, an assistant inspector and an Expert by Experience carried out this inspection. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

Service and service type

Clifton House is a ‘care home’. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care as single package under one contractual agreement. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

The service did not have a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission at the time of this inspection.

Notice of inspection

This inspection was unannounced.

What we did before the inspection

The provider was not asked to complete a provider information return prior to this inspection. This is information we require providers to send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We took this into account when we inspected the service and made the judgements in this report.

We asked the local authority and Healthwatch for any information they had which would aid our inspection. Local authorities together with other agencies may have responsibility for funding people who used the service and monitoring its quality. Healthwatch is an independent consumer champion that gathers and represents the views of the public about health and social care services in England. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with nine people who used the service and one relative. 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.

We spoke with nine members of staff including, the operational manager, the provider, one domestic staff member, two senior carers, three care staff and the activities coordinator. In addition, we spoke with two visiting health care professionals.

We reviewed a range of records. These included three people’s care record. We also looked at the records of medicines administration. We had sight of one staff member’s file in relation to recruitment and supervision. In addition, we looked at a variety of records relating to the management of the service, including any quality monitoring checks and incident and accident records.