Archived: Foresters

Updated 4 April 2017

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.

We undertook an announced inspection of Foresters on 25 February 2017. This inspection was done to check that improvements to meet legal requirements planned by the provider after our February 2016 inspection had been made. We inspected the service against one of the five key questions we ask about services: is the service safe? This is because the service was not meeting a legal requirement.

We announced the inspection because we wanted to be sure that there would be people in when we arrived. The inspection team was made up of one inspector.

Before the inspection we reviewed all the information we held about the service. This included notifications the home had sent us. A notification is the means by which providers tell us important information that affects the running of the service and the care people receive. The provider had also completed a Provider Information Record (PIR). A PIR 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.

During our inspection we spoke with two people living in the home. Most of the people living in the home did not use words as their main communication method. Because people could not describe the care and support they received we observed the support they received from staff to help us understand their experience. We spoke with three members of staff. We also looked at records relating to 14 people’s care, and reviewed records relating to the running of the service such as staff records and incident and accident records.

Updated 4 April 2017

We carried out a comprehensive inspection of this service on 21 and 23 February 2016. A breach of legal requirements was found. After the comprehensive inspection, the provider wrote to us to say what they would do to meet legal requirements in relation to the deployment of staff.

We undertook a focussed inspection to check they had followed their plan and to confirm they now met 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 Foresters on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

The inspection visit took place on 25 February 2017. Foresters is home to up to 15 people with learning disabilities in a residential area of Weymouth. At the time of our inspection there were 14 people living in the home.

The service had a registered manager at the time of our inspection. 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 this inspection we found that staff deployment had improved and cover was being sought with consideration of people’s needs. There were support hours that were not being covered at the time of our inspection and this remained an area for improvement.

Agency staff had been used to cover hours in the home. The registered manger had not ensured that checks had been made on their suitability. We spoke with a senior member of staff who addressed this immediately and ensured the appropriate information was made available by the agency and checked before these staff worked in the home.

People were protected from harm because staff understand the risks they faced and how to support them to reduce these risks.

People were at a reduced risk because staff knew how to identify and report potential abuse appropriately.