Archived: Five Gables Care Home

Updated 8 September 2015

We undertook an unannounced focused inspection of Five Gables Care on 4 August 2015. This inspection was done to check that improvements to meet legal requirements planned by the provider after our comprehensive inspection on 18 and 19 November 2014 had been made. We inspected the service against one of the five questions we ask about services: is the service safe? This is because the service was not meeting the legal requirements in relation to this question.

The inspection was undertaken by two inspectors.

Before our inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service, this included the provider’s action plan, which set out the action they would take to meet legal requirements following the last inspection.

Some of the people who used the service had difficulty communicating as they were living with dementia or other mental health conditions. However we spoke with three people who used the service, two members of the care staff, the registered manager and the provider.

We looked at the records of eleven people who used the service and observed staff support people with their medicines.

Updated 8 September 2015

We carried out an unannounced comprehensive inspection of this service on 18 and 19 November 2014. One breach of the legal requirements was found. This was because the provider had not always ensured the proper and safe management of medicines.

After the comprehensive inspection, the provider wrote to us to say what they would do to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breach. We undertook this focused inspection on the 4 August 2015 to check that they had followed their plan and to confirm that they had now met the legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to those requirements. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Five Gables Care Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Five Gables Care Home provides accommodation for up to 16 people who require nursing or personal care. On the day of our inspection 12 people were using the service. Some of the people were living with dementia or other mental health conditions.

There was a registered manager in place. 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.

At the focused inspection on the 4 August we found the provider had not followed all parts of their plan which they had told us would be completed by the 17 April 2015. All parts of the legal requirements had therefore not been met.

The three people we spoke with did not raise any concerns with us that they did not receive their medicines or received them in a way that did not meet their needs. However, people’s medicine administration records were not always fully completed to show when they had taken or refused to take their medicines. Protocols were not always in place for staff to follow when administering medicines that had been prescribed on an ‘as required’ basis. The reasons for staff administering these types of medicines was not always recorded nor reviewed by the registered manager. People’s care plans did not always reflect people’s current needs for their medicines. This was a continued breach of this Regulation.

You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.