All inspections: Seddon Court - Care Quality Commission

The home can accommodate 30 people but at the time of inspection there was eight people living there. The manager told us how the home had recently been refurbished throughout and the service was being re-designed.

People were positive about the staff team and the care they received. They told us they could make choices about how they spent their day. One person said, 'I usually have an afternoon sleep.'

Throughout the day we observed staff engaging with people in a kindly manner and involving them in decisions about activity related to their care needs. One person said, 'The staff are kind and will do anything for us.'

The home had effective policies, procedures and systems in place to manage medicines and the administration process. However, we discussed with the manager how the full procedure was not being adhered to. The manager agreed to review and monitor the procedure with immediate effect.

The home managed staffing levels appropriately and there were suitable arrangements in place to deal with foreseeable emergency cover.

Staff told us they felt well supported by their management and peers. They told us they were encouraged to train and said they worked well as a team.

The manager told us that the home had not received any complaints within the last 12 months. As part of the inspection process we reviewed the complaints policy and procedure and found effective systems to be in place should a complaint need to be managed.

When we visited the home in October 2012 people we spoke to said they were looked after well and had good food and plenty of drinks. One person told us, 'They are great here. I couldn't be looked after better.' Staff were knowledgeable about people's needs and preferences and supported them in making choices. We looked at three care records and found evidence of person centred care planning.

People living in the home had a key worker who spent time with them on a regular basis and made sure they had all the information and support they needed. The care records which we looked at contained detailed assessments of people's needs, including signed and dated risk assessments with strategies on how to manage the risks.

Training records showed that staff had now all received safeguarding training to help them recognise and deal with any potential safeguarding concerns. Staff we spoke to were able to describe how they would identify and report any signs of harm or abuse.

During our visit we saw that the home had systems in place to support staff to be suitably skilled to meet people's needs. The home had a system of structured supervision and appraisal to monitor performance and support staff to carry out their work. During our visit we found that the home had developed systems to assess and monitor quality.

We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a specific way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us.

During our visit we observed a variety of staff interactions with people living in the home. Of the four people we observed for half an hour, one person received no communication with support workers and another person was asleep throughout the observation. A further two received a variety of interaction, the majority being neither positive nor negative. Where positive interaction was observed support workers interacted well with the individual giving reassurance and holding a conversation about, what was happening in their life. Where negative interaction was observed we saw that support workers did not acknowledge expressed anxieties of people or provide reassurance that was effective in reducing their anxieties.

During our visit we observed that group activities took place and there was no information displayed that advertised any up-and-coming events. On the day that we visited the Olympic flame was due to visit the area and the Jubilee weekend was about to commence. There was no information in the service that stated what activities were in place to help the people living in the service celebrate these events should they wish to do so.

We spoke with people living in the home. They told us that they liked the support workers, finding them helpful and polite. Two people told us that they were 'bored' as there was little for them to do.

We spoke to the relatives of four people who told us they were happy with the support and care their relatives received. They told us that support workers contacted doctors appropriately and people were supported to attend medical appointments. Four relatives spoken with confirmed that they thought support workers treated people with dignity. Three relatives commented that there was not many activities in place and their relatives had on occasions reported that they were 'bored' and had 'nothing to do'.

We met with departmental managers at the Headquarters building on the 6 June 2012 to gain further information to support our judgements

These older reports are from our old approaches to inspection, including those from before CQC was created.

Archived: Seddon Court

All Inspections

28 January 2014

During a routine inspection

31 October 2012

During an inspection looking at part of the service

1 June 2012

During a routine inspection

Reports under our old system of regulation