Walberton Place Care Home

Updated 9 February 2024

The inspection

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 Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection team consisted of 4 inspectors

Service and service type

Walberton Place Care Home is a ‘care home’. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing and/or personal care as a single package under one contractual agreement dependent on their registration with us. Walberton Place Care Home is a care home without nursing care. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations. At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

The inspection was unannounced

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. We sought feedback from the local authority and used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with 5 people and 4 relatives. We spent time observing staff interactions with people and 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 10 staff including 3 care staff, 3 senior care staff, 2 hospitality staff , 1 deputy manager, and the registered manager. We spoke with 2 visiting health care professionals. We looked at records relating to people’s care and the management of the service. This included 9 care plans, 4 staff records, staff rotas, training plans and management records.

Following the inspection we received further management documents including an updated service improvement plan and we spoke with the Nominated Individual for the service. The nominated individual is responsible for supervising the management of the service on behalf of the provider.

Updated 9 February 2024

About the service

Walberton Place Care Home is a residential care home providing personal care to people aged 65 and over. The service can support up to 80 people, there were 78 people living at Walberton Place Care Home at the time of inspection. The service supports people who may be living with dementia or need support with their physical health. Walberton Place Care Home is a large purpose-built building over two floors. Each floor has separate facilities such as dining areas, lounges and places to socialise. The first floor is a specialist unit for people living with dementia. The building is surrounded by gardens and has an internal, enclosed courtyard garden.

People’s experience of the service and what we found:

Risks to people were not consistently assessed and managed. Risk assessments and care plans did not always contain the information staff needed to provide safe and effective care and staff did not always know how to support people’s needs.

People were not always receiving their medicines safely and according to prescriber’s instructions. People were not consistently safeguarded from improper treatment. Infection prevention and control procedures were not reviewed and updated, and staff were not provided with clear guidance and support. Governance and management systems were not effective in identifying these shortfalls.

Staff did not always have the skills they needed to support people’s needs. Systems for monitoring care and support were not effective in driving improvements. There was poor leadership and ineffective oversight of quality and safety. There had been a failure to make and sustain improvements over time.

People and their relatives described staff as being kind and caring. There were safe systems in place for the recruitment of staff

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection and update

The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 10 June 2023). At this inspection enough improvement had not been made and the provider was still in breach of regulations. This service has been rated requires improvement for the last four consecutive inspections and the service is now rated inadequate.

Why we inspected

The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about risk management and leadership. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks.

The inspection was prompted in part by notification of an incident following which a person using the service died. This incident is subject to further investigation by CQC as to whether any regulatory action should be taken. As a result, this inspection did not examine the circumstances of the incident. However, the information shared with CQC about the incident indicated potential concerns about the management of risk of hydration and nutrition. This inspection examined those risks.

You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report. Please see the safe and well led sections of this full report. We undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only. For those key question not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Walberton Place Care Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Enforcement

We have identified breaches in relation to management of risks, safeguarding, staffing and the management and governance of the service. Full information about CQC’s regulatory response to the more serious concerns found during inspections is added to reports after any representations and appeals have been concluded.

Follow Up

We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.

The overall rating for this service is ‘Inadequate’ and the service is therefore in ‘special measures’. This means we will keep the service under review and, if we do not propose to cancel the provider’s registration, we will re-inspect within 6 months to check for significant improvements.

If the provider has not made enough improvement within this timeframe. And there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall rating, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures. This will mean we will begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will usually lead to cancellation of their registration or to varying the conditions the registration.

For adult social care services, the maximum time for being in special measures will usually be no more than 12 months. If the service has demonstrated improvements when we inspect it, and it is no longer rated as inadequate for any of the five key questions, it will no longer be in special measures.