Archived: The Croft

Updated 4 December 2018

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 is 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.

This inspection took place on 14 November and was announced. We gave the registered manager 24 hours-notice of the inspection as the service was small and we needed to be sure that someone was in. The inspection was carried out by an adult social care inspection manager.

During the inspection we spent time with the three people who lived in the home and spoke with two relatives on the telephone. We spoke with the registered manager, senior support worker and two other members of staff. We looked at care records for two people who lived in the home and recruitment, training and personnel records for four staff. We also looked at records around how the service was managed including quality audits, records of staff meetings and feedback the registered manager had received from the families of people who lived in the home.

We reviewed the information we held about the home, including the information in the Provider Information Return (PIR), before we visited the service.The PIR is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We also contacted the local authority and they had no concerns about the service.

Updated 4 December 2018

We carried out this inspection on 14 November 2018. The inspection was announced.

This service was last inspected in January 2016 and was rated Good. At this inspection we found the evidence continued to support the rating of good and there was no evidence or information from our inspection and ongoing monitoring that demonstrated serious risks or concerns. This inspection report is written in a shorter format because our overall rating of the service has not changed since our last inspection.

The Croft is a ‘care home’. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care as single package under one contractual agreement. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

There were 3 people living in the home at the time we carried out our inspection.

There was an experienced registered manager responsible for the day-to-day management of the service. 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. The registered manager had been working for the provider organisation for a number of years.

Many of the values that underpin "Registering the Right Support" and other best practice guidance were seen in practice at this service. There was evidence that the core values of choice and promotion of independence were at the centre of people's day to day support. However, the service was located at the bottom of a hill at the edge of a community and all of the people living in the home had mobility needs so could only leave the home using transport. This made community inclusion more challenging but people were accessing local services and facilities such as the hairdressers. The staff worked very hard to ensure that the people had maximum power and control over their lives and day to day choices.

We looked at how the service managed its recruitment of new staff and saw that this was done well and all of the required checks were carried out before staff commenced working at the home.

We spoke with two relatives who gave positive feedback about the home and the staff who worked in it. They told us that the staff supported their relatives well. We saw that warm, positive relationships with people were apparent. The people had lived in the home for over 22 years and were living happy lives, as independently as possible, supported by staff who knew them well.

Staff spoken with and records seen confirmed training had been provided to enable them to support the people with their specific needs. We found staff were knowledgeable about the support needs of people in their care. We observed staff providing support to people throughout our inspection visit. We saw they knew people well and how they liked to be cared for.

We found medication procedures at the home were safe. Staff responsible for the administration of medicines had received training to ensure they had the competency and skills required. Medicines were kept safely with appropriate arrangements for storage in place.

The registered manager understood the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) and the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS). This meant they were working within the law to support people who may lack capacity to make their own decisions. We saw that people were supported to make their own decisions whenever this was possible and their choices were respected.

Care plans were person centred and driven by the people who lived in the home. They detailed how people wished and needed to be cared for. We identified that some updates were required and the registered manager showed us that they were already in process of making amendments to show how people’s needed had changed.

The registered manager used a variety of methods to assess and monitor the quality of the service. These included regular audits of the service and staff meetings to seek the views of staff about the service. The provider organisation also closely monitored the home and the manager was supported by a regional management team.