We carried out an unannounced inspection of this service on 13 July 2017. The service provides accommodation and personal care for up to 66 adults, some of whom may be living with dementia.
The service did not have a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission 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.
There were systems in place to safeguard people from harm and staff understood when and how to report any concerns they had. There were risk assessments in place that gave guidance to staff on how risks to people could be minimised, although these had not all been kept up to date. There were insufficient skilled staff to provide safe care to people and the service was relying heavily on agency staff. Poor management of the staffing rota meant that adequate numbers of staff were not always on shift. The provider had effective recruitment processes in place and were in the process of recruiting to vacant posts.
Staff had been trained to meet people’s individual needs. They understood their roles and responsibilities to seek people’s consent prior to care being provided. In recent months, staff had not received regular supervision to support them in their role, although some staff we spoke with told us that they had just had their first supervision meeting for a long time.
People were supported to have enough to eat and drink and to maintain a diet that was suited to their needs. They were also supported to access other health and social care services when required.
People’s needs had been assessed, and care plans took account of people’s individual needs, preferences, and choices. However, care plans had not always been kept up to date to ensure people’s care was relevant to their current needs.
There was a wide range of events and activities provided which was based on people’s interests and hobbies, and people were supported to maintain links with the local community.
The provider had a formal process for handling complaints and concerns but people, relatives and staff did not feel that the acting manager was approachable and did not have confidence that their views were used to make improvements to the service
There were systems in place to support the management of the home and to monitor the quality of the service, but these were not all used effectively.
We found there were breaches of regulations of the Health and Social Care Act (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report