• Care Home
  • Care home

Highstone Mews Care Home

Overall: Good read more about inspection ratings

Highstone Road, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 4DX (01226) 733966

Provided and run by:
Strong Life Care Limited

Latest inspection summary

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Background to this inspection

Updated 22 February 2022

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.

As part of CQC’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic we are looking at how services manage infection control and visiting arrangements. This was a targeted inspection looking at the infection prevention and control measures the provider had in place. We also asked the provider about any staffing pressures the service was experiencing and whether this was having an impact on the service.

This inspection took place on 27 January 2022 and was short term announced. We gave the service 24 hours’ notice of the inspection. We spoke to six staff members including the registered manager, the unit lead nurse, another nurse, a front of house administrator and two residents.

We found the following examples of good practice;

Staff asked residents for their preferred type of visits; most residents wanted face to face normally but many wanted none during the worst peak waves of Covid. Service staff facilitated essential carer giver (ECG) visits. ECGs were managed as part of the service’s PCR testing regime.

All the service’s staff and residents were double vaccinated and had booster jabs. The service maintained a vaccination tracker we reviewed from November 2021. This monitored dates of all staff vaccinations and which type, where they worked in the home and any reactions or side effects. The home administrator kept copies of all Covid passports and vaccinations for staff, residents and visitors. They told us staff helped quite a lot of other staff, residents and relatives with IT/technical support to download their Covid passports.

The service supported staff wellbeing through a welfare officer based in Nottingham who we heard was very responsive. All staff were aware of them and they had won an award at the December 2021 staff awards event. The service also held a family umbrella monthly wellness group as many staff were depressed and anxious during Covid. This focused on a different topic each month such as the menopause. Managers found this group helped to reduce staff sickness through discussion.

The service had implemented a Covid champions role. We reviewed the 12 responsibilities of this role which included sharing links to the latest government guidelines with staff via social messaging groups, to ensure PPE, cleaning products and test kits were well stocked, required and that contingency supplies are robust.

All the service’s eight administrative staff were antibiotic guardians. The service had done lots of work on administering antiviral antibiotics onsite which was unusual for care homes.

Although it was not required practice, district nurses (DNs) adopted asceptic techniques. Managers told us they had a very close supportive relationship with their DNs. The service had held a staff awards night in December 2021 where the DN team won an IPC award.

The service’s hair salon had been converted into a decontamination room since Covid. This room had a UV light handwashing monitor which showed any missed areas when people placed their hands under. Each unit at the service had its own sluice room and linen store to prevent any risk of cross-infection or contamination.

Service staff had held infection control and dementia information sessions for resident family relatives to help them understand the issues and difficulties residents faced. The RMs told us they received less complaints from relatives as a result. This also helped relatives to bond and form support groups with the service’s other resident relatives

We saw evidence the service had responded to feedback and concerns people raised. For example a noticeboard outlined some ‘you said, what we did’ actions around visiting, access to opticians, day trips/outings, the care home enviro

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 22 February 2022

About the service

Highstone Mews Care Home is a residential care home that provides accommodation and personal care for adults with a range of care and support needs, including adults who are living with dementia. The service also provided a small number of intermediate care placements for people who were discharged from hospital but needed more time to recover. The home can accommodate up to 62 people in one adapted building over two floors. At the time of this inspection there were 61 people using the service.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

People received a good standard of care and we saw many examples where people had achieved better health outcomes after moving to the home, made possible due to the dedication and skill of the staff team. The service had developed extremely strong working relationships with local health professionals which ensured people’s healthcare needs were fully met. People received care from a knowledgeable staff team who had access to a wide variety of training and support.

The service was safe and people were cared for by staff who treated them with kindness, dignity and respect. Risks to people's health and safety were assessed and mitigated. Medicines were managed in a safe and proper way. Incidents and accidents were logged and investigated and learnt from where appropriate. There were enough staff to keep people safe and meet their needs in a timely manner.

People were supported to take part in a range of activities and planned events at the home. People’s feedback showed this could be further improved to help them remain meaningfully occupied in between planned events. Since we last inspected the provider had completely reformed the home’s environment and this genuinely impacted positively on people’s lives as they had real influence over decisions about how the service should look.

Staff were knowledgeable about people’s needs. The service used an electronic care planning system which supported staff to regularly review the care and support people needed. Further consideration was needed to clearly demonstrate people, their relatives and representatives were consulted as part of the care review process and minor improvements were needed to the quality of information in people’s ‘intermediate care’ plans to better support staff to deliver person-centred care. The service fully met the requirements of the accessible information standard, ensuring creative aids were available to support people’s communication and understanding.

There was a truly person-centred culture with the management and staff team, and all were highly involved in peoples’ care and support. The service sought and developed its own best practice to be at the forefront of high-quality care. A range of audits and checks were undertaken to ensure continuous improvement of the service.

Staff encouraged people to make their own decisions and they obtained consent from people before care was delivered. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests. The policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the Care Quality Commission (CQC) website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published 29 July 2017).

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.