8 May 2017
During an inspection looking at part of the service
The home had a registered manager who had been in post since July 2016. 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.
Birchwood – Newbury is a care home with nursing that is registered to provide support to a total of 60 people across three floors. At the time of the inspection, we were advised that the ground floor had been closed, to allow staff to be deployed to the other two floors. A total of 46 people were being provided support and care at the service.
Staff knew how to keep people safe by reporting concerns immediately. Systems and processes were in place to recruit staff who were suitable to work in the service and to protect people against the risk of abuse. However, the service required using agency staff as there were a number of vacancies within the service. This ensured sufficient staff were deployed to keep people safe.
There was a rolling training programme in place for all staff. This ensured that when any training was due to expire, this was arranged and booked for staff to attend, keeping staff equipped with knowledge.
People had comprehensive care plans in place, that informed staff how they wanted to be kept safe. This required further evaluation in the form of risk assessments. We found that whilst the risks had been assessed for some people, there were no written guidelines in place to inform staff how people should be kept safe. For example, one person was at high risk of falls, this was identified, however no care plan was written up specific to this.
Records were not maintained accurately to illustrate that people were receiving the appropriate level of support and care in line with their care plan. For example we looked at records for people who required 2:1 support and found that the daily records did not illustrate that the appropriate level of staff were supporting. We also found that from the records we were unable to distinguish if male or female staff were helping people, even when this had specifically been highlighted in the care plan.