Glebe House

Updated 23 May 2025

We carried out an assessment of this service between 26 June 2025 and 29 August 2025. We visited the service on 27 June 2025, 3 July 2025 and 30 July 2025.

Glebe House is a care home located in Rainham, Essex and supports older people with mental health and dementia care needs. It is registered to provide accommodation and personal care for up to 12 people. At the time of the inspection, the service was supporting 10 people. The home has 2 floors with adapted facilities and en-suite rooms.

This assessment was carried out following concerns received from the local authority. The inspection team consisted of 3 inspectors and 1 medicines inspector.

We looked at 33 quality statements under the key questions of safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.

The assessment was unannounced. We spoke with the registered manager, the deputy manager, and the senior support manager, 8 staff members, 3 people living at the service and 4 relatives.

We found 4 breaches of regulations in relation to: safe care and treatment, safeguarding, premises and equipment and governance.

The last rating for this service was required improvement (published 14 October 2022). The overall rating for this assessment remains as requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection.

Updated 23 May 2025

We received mixed feedback from people who used the service. A person told us, “This is not the best place to live at. Staff don’t always listen to me.” Another person said, “The staff support me when I need help with doing something, I don’t have any concerns.”

People did not always receive a service that provided safe, effective, person-centred care to meet their needs. Risks to people’s health, safety and wellbeing were not consistently and safely assessed. Paper care plans had not been updated with new information that was placed on the service locked computer, which staff did not have access to the information. Due the information that was available to the inspector’s team on day 1 and day 2 of our assessment, we found that this was a potential risk for people living at the service. We also saw that some Information was copied and pasted throughout care records leading to people not receiving personalised care.

People were not always being supported appropriately with their privacy and dignity. Decisions about people’s capacity were being made without the correct procedures being followed. The management of medicines was not always safe. We found people were at risk of not receiving their medicines as prescribed. Protocols for ‘as required’ medicines lacked information for staff to follow.

Safeguarding procedures were not always being followed to ensure that people were safe from avoidable harm and were not reported to the authorities in a timely manner.

The environment was not safe. There were infection control issues such as missing toilet seats and areas of the service that were in need of a deep clean. The bathroom floors were worn and needed replacing.

Quality assurance systems were not robust as they had not identified the significant shortfalls we found during the assessment. We noted care plans and risk assessments did not reflect learning from incidents or any changes identified with the needs of people who used the service. Paper care plans and risk assessments had not been updated and were showing that they had not been reviewed since 2023, and did not reflect the current needs of people.

Some action had not been taken following the findings of external audits to improve the quality of care provided to people. The registered manager had put an action plan in place to drive improvements in the service. However, some actions had not been completed in a reasonable timeframe to help manage the risks to people.

Throughout our visits we saw staff interacted with people who used the service in a kind and courteous way.

Following the inspection, the provider subsequently submitted supplementary evidence demonstrating that the necessary actions have since been completed, or that suitable steps had already been undertaken. However, this information was not available to the inspection team at the time the assessment was carried out.