20 February 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Farm Lane is a residential care home providing personal and nursing care to up to 66 people. The service provides support to older people and people living with dementia. At the time of our inspection there were 55 people using the service.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
People and their families felt this was a safe service. Relatives told us the provider was good at keeping them updated. The service engaged effectively with people and their relatives to identify how the service could improve and to address any concerns that people may have.
The service operated effective systems for auditing care and ensuring robust governance. However, we identified a serious record system as night staff were completing important records such as welfare checks in advance, which meant that we could not be sure that these had actually taken place. The provider advised us of the steps they were taking to address this issue.
The service had appropriate measures to safeguard people from abuse and ill treatment. Staff understood their responsibilities to report safeguarding concerns and managers took appropriate steps to ensure these were acted on. However, we identified that people sometimes received support from care workers of the opposite gender without robust procedures for ensuring that this was what people wanted. We made a recommendation to the provider to review their procedures to ensure people were consenting to care from male carers.
Staff reported feeling well supported by managers and processes worked effectively to ensure information was shared with staff.
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.
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 5 October 2022).
Why we inspected
We received concerns in relation to how the provider managed safeguarding concerns. As a result, we undertook a targeted inspection to assess these concerns. As a result of our findings, we decided to widen the inspection to review the key question of well-led.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.
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 Farm Lane on our website at www.cqc.org.uk
Enforcement
We have found a breach of regulation in relation to good governance. We served a warning notice to the provider.
Follow up
We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.