Updated 17 February 2016
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.
The inspection took place on 12 January 2016 and was unannounced. The inspection was undertaken by two inspectors, a specialist advisor in dementia care and an expert by experience. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of residential care service.
At the last inspection of the service in December 2015 we found the provider was not meeting all the required standards for maintaining people’s safety. Systems to assess, identify and manage risks were not sufficiently robust to keep people safe. Staff were not using the appropriate equipment to move people safely and this placed people who lived at the home at risk of harm. The provider submitted an action plan to tell us the improvements they had made to keep people safe. We checked to see if these actions had been put into place.
The provider completed a provider information return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We were able to review the information as part of our evidence when conducting our inspection.
We reviewed the information we held about the service. This included statutory notifications received from the provider. These are notifications the provider must send to us. They inform of deaths in the home and incidents that affect people’s health, safety and welfare. We also contacted the local authority commissioners to find out their views of the service provided. Commissioners are people who contract care and support services provided to people. They had recently completed a visit to the service and there were no concerns identified.
We spoke with eight people who lived at the home and four relatives and friends. We spoke with the registered manager, two senior care staff, five care staff and two non-care staff. We also spoke with two visiting healthcare professionals. As some people at Bablake House were unable to tell us about their care, we used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us. We also spent time observing care and support being delivered in communal areas and we observed how people were supported at lunch time.
We reviewed seven people’s care plans and daily records to see how their care and treatment was planned and delivered. We checked records to make sure staff were recruited safely and were trained to deliver care and support appropriate to each person’s needs. We reviewed the results of the provider’s quality monitoring system to see what actions were taken and planned to improve the quality of the service.