Archived: Orchard House

Updated 5 June 2015

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked 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 on 13 October 2014 and was unannounced. The inspection team consisted of two inspectors.

Before our inspection we spoke with three social care professionals. We also gathered and reviewed information we had about the service such as notifications and information from previous inspections. A notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send us by law.

None of the four people who used the service was able to communicate with us. However, we were able to carry out some discreet observations of care and support to help us understand how people’s care needs were being met. During the inspection we spoke with four care staff, the manager and someone from the local authority who was at the service in an advisory capacity.

Following the inspection we spoke with the relatives of all the people who lived at Orchard House and we also spoke with a health professional who had carried out a monitoring visit to the service.

We looked at three people’s care records and information relating to the management of the service including evidence of staff training.

Updated 5 June 2015

Orchard House is a care home which provides accommodation for up to six people who require personal care. Orchard House provides a service for people who have a learning disability and/or autistic spectrum disorder. There were four people living in the service at the time of our inspection.

This inspection took place on 13 October 2014.

We inspected Orchard House on 19 May 2014 and found the provider was not meeting all the standards. We had moderate concerns about the planning and delivery of care; we also had minor concerns because the provider did not have an effective system for monitoring the quality of the service. We carried out a further inspection on 4 September 2014 and found improvements in both these areas.

At the time of our inspection there was no registered manager at Orchard House. 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 that people with complex needs were at risk of these needs not being met safely because staff had not received relevant training. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.

We found to the management of the service had been inconsistent and there was insufficient support by the provider to ensure arrangements in place for managing the service were appropriate. Processes for providing staff with the training and support they needed were not in place so that they could understand the specific and complex needs of the people they were supporting. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.

Relatives of people who used the service were consulted about their family member’s care but did not always feel that managers and staff communicated well with them. People did not always have their social needs met

Some improvements had been made to processes for supporting people with their medicines, further areas for improvement had been identified and actions were being taken.

CQC monitors the operation of the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005 Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), and to report on what we find. DoLS are a code of practice to supplement the Mental Capacity Act 2005. These safeguards protect the rights of adults by ensuring that if there are restrictions on their freedom and liberty these are assessed by appropriately trained professionals. The service was meeting the requirements of the DoLS.

Staff understood what they should do if they saw or suspected abuse. People were supported to access health care according to their individual needs.

People received care and support from staff who were caring and treated them with respect.