20 May 2022
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Gower Gardens is a residential care home providing personal care to 59 people aged 65 and over at the time of the inspection.
The care home accommodates people across three separate floors, each of which has separate facilities. It provides care to older people, some of whom are living with dementia.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
People had detailed risk assessments which guided staff to support people safely and mitigate risks. Care plans were detailed and outlined people’s support needs. However, we reviewed the records of one person who had diabetes and found records did not include a hyperglycaemia/hypoglycaemia rescue plan or the person’s normal range for their blood glucose reading.
People told us they felt safe and relatives told us they were confident their loved ones were supported safely.
Medication errors were addressed appropriately. Staff had medication training and received regular competency checks.
Staff were recruited safely. Staff had the required training to enable them to support people safely. Staff felt supported by the management team and felt comfortable raising any concerns. Staff received regular supervisions, spot checks and progress reviews.
Incidents and accidents had been recorded, investigated and appropriate action taken.
Infection prevention and control practices were safe, and the registered manager carried out regular checks on staff and audits.
People were supported to eat and drink. People were offered a variety of different food choices, and staff presented the food to them to enable them to make their own choice.
Staff worked with other professionals to ensure people received joined up care.
The design of the home was suited to the needs of people and people’s rooms were homely.
Audits were effective in identifying quality issues. The registered manager evidenced actions taken to resolve the issues identified by audits. People and relatives were encouraged to provide feedback on the service. The provider had an action plan which detailed improvements needed across the service. The action plan outlined who was responsible for individual actions and completion dates.
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 CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection and update
The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 2 April 2020) and there were two breaches of regulation. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service. We received concerns in relation to medication and the systems and processes in place for restraint. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks. We undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe, effective and well-led only.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.
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.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Gower Gardens on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.