- Care home
Stonedale Lodge Care Home
Report from 11 June 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of Assessment: 22 July 2025 – 11 August 2025. Stonedale Lodge is a care home with nursing and provides accommodation and personal care for up to 180 people over 6 units. At the time of the assessment the provider was not providing nursing care. There were 58 people living at the home across 3 units.
We carried out this assessment due to the current rating of the service and the breaches of regulations. We carried out site visits to the home on 22, 23 and 29 July 2025, with the remainder of the assessment being conducted offsite. We assessed 20 quality statements from the key questions safe, caring and well-led.
During this assessment the provider was in breach of regulations in relation to people’s safety and treatment, safeguarding, dignity and respect and good governance. The overall rating is inadequate.
People were not always provided with safe care and treatment. Safety events were not always analysed, and there was a lack of prompt action taken to prevent further occurrences. Risks to people were not consistently monitored. There were gaps in risk management and monitoring records indicating people had not received the care they needed at the right time to mitigate risk. People were not protected from the risk of financial and material abuse. Parts of the environment and equipment were unsafe and unclean and there was a lack of safety checks carried out on safety equipment used to keep people safe. Safe infection prevention and control (IPC) practices were not always followed, and IPC audits were not always effective. Medicines were not managed or administered safely. People did not always receive their prescribed medicines at the right time and in the right way by suitably trained and competent staff.
People were not consistently treated with dignity and respect. People’s personal possessions were not managed in a respectful and dignified way and some people lacked personal items such as clothing and toiletries. There was a lack of meaningful activities for people and poor communication with staff, impacting on their wellbeing. There was a lack of consistent management and leadership. The providers governance systems and processes were not operated effectively. The systems and processes continuously failed to assess, monitor, and improve the quality and safety of the service. There was a lack of continuous learning and improvement across the service. Following the last assessment the provider assured us improvements had been made, however, during this assessment we identified new and continuous concerns.
The provider remains 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 use our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of the care they provide.
The provider was previously in breach of the legal regulations in relation to safe care safeguarding and good governance. Improvements were not found at this assessment, and the provider remained in breach of these regulations. The provider was also in breach of the legal regulation relating to dignity and respect.
The provider was previously in breach of legal regulation in relation to person centeredcare. Improvements were found at this assessment and the provider was no longer in breach of this regulation.
People's experience of this service
People told us they felt safe and well cared for, their comments included, “Yes, I feel very safe, they look after me well” and “I do feel safe here.” People described staff as ‘Lovely’, ‘Very kind’, ‘Friendly’, ‘Very helpful’ and ‘Caring’. People and family members felt there was a lack of activities and stimulation. One person said, “I'm bored rigid. I need someone to take me out, but I don't go anywhere” and another person said, “I want to do more things and go out to places.” Family members comments included, “There are no activities going on here, nothing to stimulate [relative]”, “[Relative] just sits about here” and “[Relative] loves the sun and likes sitting in the garden, but it's such a state.”
People told us, staff generally provided prompt assistance. However, one person said, “I press this bell, and they come, and they turn the bell off and then they go away and sometimes don't come back for a while.” A family member told us they did not feel their relative was taken to the toilet often enough. The family member said they had told a manager about this, but it was still happening. People and family members told us they were unsure who the manager was but would raise any concerns with staff. Their comments included, “I don't know who the big chief is, but if things were not right, I would tell the ones [staff] here,” “I only know the staff here and I would say if things aren't right.” “I don't know who the boss is,” “I don't know who the manager is, they change a lot” and “The managers change frequently, so we don't know who the current one is."