Avenue House Nursing and Care Home

Updated 6 January 2021

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.

As part of CQC’s response to care homes with outbreaks of coronavirus, we are conducting reviews to ensure that the Infection Prevention and Control practice was safe and the service was compliant with IPC measures. This was a targeted inspection looking at the IPC practices the provider has in place.

This inspection took place on 2 December 2020 and was announced.

Updated 6 January 2021

About the service

Avenue House Nursing and Care Home provides nursing and residential care for up to 45 older people, including people living with dementia. There were 33 people receiving care at the time of the inspection.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

Systems and processes in place to give the manager oversight were not robust enough to identify when records were incorrect, not completed or required updating.

Risk assessments were in place to protect people from harm. However, we found an environmental risk that had not been investigated. The manager agreed to remove the risk immediately.

People were supported by trained staff who knew them well. People, staff and relatives all spoke highly of the manager and the support they offered.

We found there were sufficient numbers of staff on shift and the manager regularly reviewed staffing levels. Staff had been safely recruited.

Medicine administration was completed in line with best practice guidance.

Staff were kind and caring to the people living at Avenue House Nursing and Care Home. Staff understood safeguarding and were confident to raise any concerns they may have.

People were protected again infection. Staff wore personal protective equipment and the environment was kept clean.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published 19 June 2018).

Why we inspected

The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about manual handling, record keeping and staffing. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.

We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvement.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Avenue House Nursing and Care Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.