This inspection took place on 10 and 12 November 2015 and was unannounced. This was the first inspection of the home by the Commission; the home was registered with the Commission in November 2014.
The Elms is a residential care home without nursing and provides care and support for up to 14 older people. On the day of our inspection the home was at full occupancy.
The service has a registered manager. 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. The registered manager was not available on the day of inspection. Senior members of staff were available however to assist the inspection.
The staff had received training regarding how to keep people safe. They were aware of the service safeguarding and whistle-blowing policy and procedures.
Staffing numbers were sufficient to meet people’s needs and this ensured people were supported safely. Staff we spoke with felt the staffing level was appropriate.
Staff demonstrated a detailed knowledge of people’s needs and had received training to support people to be safe and respond to their care needs. However staff supervision and refresher training had fallen behind.
There were suitable arrangements in place for the safe storage and administration of people’s medicines. Improvement was required in relation to processes for recording medicine stock levels and medicine disposal.
Care provided to people met their needs. However care records provided basic information and did not provide personalised information about how to support people. People were involved in regular activities.
The staff had a clear knowledge of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. These safeguards aim to protect people living in care homes and hospitals from being inappropriately deprived of their liberty. These safeguards can only be used when a person lacks the mental capacity to make certain decisions and there is no other way of supporting the person safely. Meetings had been arranged in order to enable people’s best interest to be assessed when it had been identified that they lacked the capacity to consent to their care and treatment.
There was a robust staff recruitment process in operation designed to employ staff that would have or be able to develop the skills to keep people safe and support individuals to meet their needs.
People had their physical and mental health needs monitored. The service maintained daily records of how people’s needs were meet and this included information about medical appointments with GP’s and Dentists for example
There were positive and caring relationships between staff and people at the service. People praised the staff that provided their care and we received positive feedback from people’s relatives and visitors to the service. Staff respected people’s privacy and we saw staff working with people in a kind and compassionate way when responding to their needs.
There was a complaints procedure for people, families and friends to use and compliments were also recorded.
We saw that the service took time to work with and understand people’s individual way of communicating in order that the service staff could respond appropriately to the person.
The provider had quality monitoring systems in place which were used to bring about improvements to the service. Some improvements had not yet been embedded by the service.