Archived: Albion Court Care Centre

Updated 10 January 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.

This inspection took place on 2 and 9 November 2016 and was unannounced.

The inspection was carried out by three inspectors and two experts by experience. An expert-by-experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service. Our experts-by experience had experience of using this type of service.

Before our inspection we looked at the information we hold about the service including notifications and concerns received. We spoke with people that commission the service for people regarding their view of the service provided. We had asked the registered provider to complete and return the Provider Information Return (PIR) which we used to plan our inspection. The PIR is a form that asked the provider to give some key information about the service, what the services does well and improvements they plan to make We reviewed regular quality reports sent to us by the local authority that purchases the care on behalf of people, to see what information they held about the service. These are reports that tell us if the local authority has concerns about the service they purchase on behalf of people. We also contacted the Clinical Commissioning Group that purchased services.

We observed how staff supported people throughout the inspection to help us understand their experience of living at the home. As part of our observations we used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the needs of people who could not talk with us.

We spoke with 17 people that lived in the home, nine relatives, and ten staff including those with responsibility for care, nursing, activities, catering and management of the home. We looked at three people’s care records to check if they were receiving care as planned and three staff files to check training and recruitment processes. We looked at medicine management processes to determine if the warning notice had been met and medicines management was safe.

Updated 10 January 2017

This inspection took place on 2 and 9 November 2016 and was unannounced.

We last carried out a full inspection of this service on 1 October 2015 when we identified that improvements were needed in all the questions we ask. As a result of the breach of regulations in the way medicines were managed we carried out a follow up inspection on 9 July 2016 to check if improvements in the management of medicines had been made. We found that there had not been sufficient improvements so we issued a warning notice to the registered provider to encourage further improvements. At this inspection we checked that the required improvements had been made and maintained. We saw that improvements had been made so that people were receiving their medicines as required but some further improvements were needed.

Albion Court Care Centre provides nursing and personal care to up to 89 people for reasons of frailty, physical disability, sensory impairment and mental health.

The registered provider is required as part of their conditions of registration to have a registered manager in post. At the time of or inspection there had not been a registered manager in post since April 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.

During our inspection we found that improvements had been made at Albion Court so that generally people and their relatives were happier with the service they received. However, we identified that further improvements were needed in areas such as staff consistency, medicines and mealtime management.

People’s needs were met but care provided to people was generally task orientated rather than person centred. For example, staff completed the basis tasks for people such as getting people up and dressed in the morning, but no thought was given about people wanting a drink at that time. Instead people had to wait until the drinks trolley came round later in the morning.

People received food and drink that met their nutritional needs but mealtimes were not always a pleasant experience and well managed.

The provider had assessed the number of staff needed to meet people’s needs but due to the dependency on agency staff to meet the required numbers because of a high turnover of staff people were unhappy with the number of different people in the home.

Staff were supported to provide care to people through the provision of training, supervision and improved communications through meetings and handovers.

Systems were in place to listen to the views of people and take actions to address the issues raised through complaints, surveys and meetings. The quality of the service was monitored but the systems had not always idenfied the areas where improvements were needed.