Barleycroft Care Home

Ratings

• Overall

  Requires improvement

• Safe

  Requires improvement

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Requires improvement

Our view of the service

We carried out an assessment of this service between 10 May 2025 to 22 May 2025. We visited the service on 15 May 2025. Barleycroft is a care home that provides accommodation, personal and nursing care for up to 80 people across three separate floors, each of which has separate adapted facilities. One of the floors specialises in providing care to people living with dementia. At the time of the assessment, there were 59 people using the service.

We spoke with the manager, the clinical lead, the regional support manager, 8 staff, 3 people living at the service and 10 relatives as part of this assessment.

This report only covers our findings in relation to the key questions safe and well-led. For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

We looked at 15 quality statements; Learning culture, Safe systems, pathways and transitions, Safeguarding, Involving people to manage risks, Safe environments, Safe and effective staffing, Infection prevention and control, Medicines optimisation, Shared direction and culture, Capable, compassionate and inclusive leaders, Freedom to speak up, Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion, Governance, management and sustainability, Partnerships and communities and Learning, improvement and innovation.

The last rating for this service was Good (published 10 November 2023). The overall rating for the service has changed from Good to Requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection.

We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvement. Please see the safe and well-led sections of this full report.

You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Barleycroft on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

People's experience of this service

Staff had received training about how to recognise abuse. Systems were not always effective in assessing and managing risks to people while they receive a service. Lessons were learned from incidents and accidents to help prevent their re-occurrence. The provider had policies and procedures regarding the prevention and control of infection, and they kept the staff up to date with relevant national guidance. The service had suitable arrangements to protect people using the service against risks associated with the unsafe management of medicines.

There were quality assurance and governance systems in place to drive continuous improvement. However, the systems were not always working effectively because the provider had not identified and improved some of the issues we found during the inspection. Staff were aware of who they were accountable to and understood their roles and responsibilities in ensuring people’s needs were met. The provider had links with the wider community in order to help ensure a joined-up approach to people's support.