Updated 5 February 2019
The inspection:
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked 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.
Inspection team:
This inspection was carried out by one inspector.
Service and service type:
Seaton House 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.
A manager was in post who was registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). 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 manager understood their responsibilities and sent us the information they were required to such as notifications of changes or incidents that affected people who used the service.
Notice of inspection:
This inspection was announced. We gave the registered manager a short period of notice because people who live there were often out at work or engaging in leisure activities. We wanted to be sure they were offered the opportunity to participate in the inspection.
What we did:
Before the inspection, the registered 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. The registered provider returned the PIR and we took this into account when we made our judgements in this report. We reviewed other information that we held about the service such as notifications. These are events that happen in the service that the registered provider is required to tell us about. We considered the last inspection report and information that had been sent to us by other agencies. We also had contact with commissioners who had a contract with the registered provider.
We spoke with five people who used the service and observed how staff interacted with them. We also spoke with two staff members, the registered manager and a visiting social care professional.
We looked at the care records for two people who used the service and we undertook a tour of the premises with a person who lived there. We also looked at records in relation to the management of the service such as quality assurance checks, staff training records, safeguarding information and accidents and incident information.