8 September 2021
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Normandy House is a residential care home providing personal care and support to four adults with a learning disability. The service can support up to six people in one adapted building.
Normandy House is a family sized property in a residential area which looks similar to other houses on the street. It is located in the suburbs so transport is required to access community resources and the town.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Improvements were required to ensure care records reflected people's current risks to ensure staff knew how to provide safe care and support. Some medicine recording required strengthening to ensure staff knew when to administer medicines safely and record all relevant information in line with best practice guidance.
Improvements were needed to quality assurance processes to ensure they were completed within the provider's timescales and identified issues which needed action. The registered manager was committed to ensuring people received good quality care in line with the Right support, right care, right culture guidelines and followed up promptly on issues brought to their attention.
People received safe care and were supported by a consistent team of staff. Safe recruitment processes were in place. Processes were in place to ensure lessons were learned when things went wrong.
Infection prevention and control measures were in place including sufficient stocks of personal protective equipment (PPE) to reduce the risk of cross infection.
People living in the service, relatives/next of kin and staff had opportunities to contribute their views. Positive feedback was received about communication between staff and relatives. Relatives knew how to make a complaint if they needed to.
We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right Support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people.
Based on our review of the key questions Safe and Well-led, the service was able to demonstrate how they were meeting the underpinning principles of Right support, right care, right culture.
Right support:
• People were supported to have choice and control of their lives. People were starting to be able to do activities they enjoyed again, and meet more often with family and friends, following the lifting of the pandemic restriction.
Right care:
• People were cared for safely. We found some issues with documentation which needed to be strengthened.
Right culture:
• The registered manager and staff promoted a positive and open culture. When issues were brought to the attention of the registered manager they were dealt with appropriately. Relatives knew how to make a complaint and felt any concerns would be taken seriously.
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 13 November 2019). In March 2021 we undertook a targeted inspection which only looked at the area of infection prevention and control. This did not impact upon the last rating.
Why we inspected
We received some concerns in relation to management and staff practices in the service. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.
We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the Safe key question. We look at this in all care home inspections even if no concerns or risks have been identified. This is to provide assurance that the service can respond to COVID-19 and other infection outbreaks effectively.
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.
The overall rating for the service has changed from good to requires improvement. This is based on the findings at this inspection.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Normandy House 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.