The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has put Wellburn House, Stockton-on-Tees into special measures to protect people, after rating them as Inadequate after inspection visits in March and April this year.
Wellburn House is a 90 bedded purpose built two storey care home. It has two units; the ground floor unit for people with personal care needs and the first floor unit for people living with dementia.
We previously inspected Wellburn House in November 2015 and told the service that they must make improvements to protect the safety and welfare of residents. At our latest inspection we found the service had failed to make these improvements, which is why we have put the care home into special measures.
Under CQC’s new programme of inspections, all adult social care services are being given a rating to help people choose care. We ask five questions, are services; safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led. Overall, Wellburn House has been rated as Inadequate.
The full report from the inspection can be found here on our website: www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-327616973/reports
The report identifies a number of areas in which improvements are required, including:
- The service was not safeguarding people living at the service from abuse and improper treatment.
- People were being deprived of their liberty without lawful authority.
- Medicines were not always managed safely for people and records had not been completed correctly. People did not receive their medicines at the times they needed them and in a safe way. Medicines were not administered and recorded properly.
Debbie Westhead, Deputy Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care in the North, said:
“People are entitled to services which provide safe, effective, compassionate and high quality care.
“We found that the care provided at Wellburn House fell short of what we expect services to provide. We have told the registered provider, Akari Care Limited that they must take action to resolve the issues we identified.
“Our first instinct is to make sure the service improves, but we must also take action to protect people when we are worried about their safety.
“We will continue to monitor the provider’s progress in making the necessary improvements to ensure that people living at the service receive the quality of care they are entitled to expect.”
Services placed in special measures will be kept under review. In terms of our enforcement actions, we have asked this provider to notify CQC of safeguarding matters and significant events . If insufficient action is taken to address these issues we will take further action in line with our enforcement procedures.
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For further information please contact CQC Regional Communications Officer Kerri James by email kerri.james@cqc.org.uk or by phone on 07464 92 9966. Journalists wishing to speak to the press office outside of office hours can find out how to contact the team here. Please note: the press office is unable to advise members of the public on health or social care matters.
For general enquiries, please call 03000 61 61 61.
Find out more
Read reports from our checks on the standards at Wellburn House