23 & 26 October 2015
During a routine inspection
The George Crouch Centre is an extra care housing scheme run by the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham consisting of 32 flats. The council provides personal care or help with medicines to a number of tenants in the scheme assessed as needing this type of support. At the time of this inspection there were eleven people who received support with personal care or with their medicines. The flats are divided between two floors which are accessible by a lift.
There was registered manager at the service. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
We found the medicines record for one medicine for one person did not show a running total so the provider could not be sure the person was receiving this medicine as prescribed. Risk assessments were carried out and risk management plans were in place but in the case of one person a risk had not been identified. Staff had received training in whistleblowing and safeguarding.
Building health and safety checks were carried out. The service had a plan to respond to emergencies which staff were aware of. Safe recruitment checks were carried out. Staff received regular training, supervisions and appraisals. People gave their consent to staff before care was delivered. Staff were able to provide support to people to make and attend health care appointments. Some people received support with food preparation and staff were aware of their dietary requirements.
People and a relative told us staff were caring and staff had spent time getting to know people, their care needs and preferences. Staff were knowledgeable about maintaining people’s independence, dignity, privacy and self-respect.
Staff were aware of how to deliver a personalised care service but told us extra staff would enable them to give more time to people and offer more activities. Some people felt there should be more activities. The registered manager told us there were usually more staff on duty to enable this to happen but two staff members were currently on long term sick leave. Staff and people were aware of the complaints procedure and we saw complaints had been dealt with in accordance with the complaints policy.
The service had systems in place to obtain feedback from staff, people and involved professionals. Quality assurance systems were in place to audit the care provided. However audits did not show when actions had been completed.