Archived: Meadows Court Care Home

Updated 22 September 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 was planned to check whether the provider was 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.

We inspected Meadows Court Care Home on 20 August 2015. The inspection was unannounced and the inspection team consisted of a single inspector. We last inspected the service on 19 November 2013.

Before we undertook our inspection visit, we looked at the information we held about the home such as notifications, which are events that happened in the service that the provider is required to tell us about, and information that had been sent to us by other agencies. We also spoke with the local authority who commissioned services from the registered provider in order to obtain their view on the quality of care provided by the service.

During our inspection we spoke with seven people who lived at the service and a community healthcare training officer. We also spoke with the registered provider, the registered manager, four care staff, the cook and the maintenance person.

As part of the inspection we spent time observing how staff provided care for people to help us better understand their experiences of care. This was because some people who lived at the home had difficulties with their memory and were unable to tell us about their experience of living there. In order to do this we used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experiences of people who could not speak with us.

We reviewed the information available in four care plan records. A care plan provides staff with detailed information and guidance on how to meet a person's assessed social and health care needs. Other information we looked at included; three staff recruitment files, staff duty rotas, training, supervision and appraisal arrangements, information and records about the activities provided and those in place for managing complaints and monitoring and assessing the quality of the service.

Updated 22 September 2015

Meadows Court Care Home provides care for up to 22 older people, some of whom experience needs related to memory loss associated with conditions such as dementia. There were 21 people living at the home at the time of our inspection.

The registered provider had a registered manager in place. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) 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.

People were involved in making decisions about how they wanted to be supported and how they spent their time. The registered provider had processes in place that ensured, when needed, they acted in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA). CQC is required by law to monitor the operation of the Mental Capacity Act, 2005 Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) and to report on what we find. DoLS are in place to protect people where they do not have capacity to make decisions and where it is considered necessary to restrict their freedom in some way, usually to protect themselves. At the time of the inspection one person who used the service had their freedom restricted and the registered provider had acted in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA).

Background checks had been completed by the registered provider before new staff were appointed to ensure they were safe to work at the home.

Staff understood people’s needs, wishes and preferences and they had received training in order to enable them to provide care in a way which met people’s individual needs. Positive working relationships had been developed between staff and people who used the service and their relatives and were being maintained. Staff were caring in their approach and people’s privacy and dignity were maintained.

Staff knew how to recognise and report any concerns they had regarding people’s safety so that people were kept safe from harm.

People and their relatives had been consulted about the care they needed and were offered the opportunity to undertake activities. However, the home did not always enable people to carry out person-centred activities on a regular planned basis in order to help them to be stimulated and maintain and further develop their interests and hobbies.

Staff provided the care described in each person’s care record. People had access to a range of healthcare professionals when they required both routine and more specialist help. Clear arrangements were also in place for ordering, storing, administering and disposing of medicines.

People were provided with a good choice of nutritious meals. When necessary, people were given any extra help they needed to make sure that they had enough to eat and drink to keep them healthy.

The home was run in an open and inclusive way. Staff were encouraged to speak out if they had any concerns and there were systems in place for handling and resolving complaints.

The registered provider and registered manager had systems in place to enable them to continually assess and monitor the quality of the services they provided.