14 June 2022
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Earlham House is a residential care home which provides accommodation and personal care to up to eight
people with mental health needs. At the time of the inspection seven people were living at the service.
Earlham House is a care home set up in an adapted residential building over two floors with a garden.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Staff recruitment checks were verified by the provider, however, we have made a recommendation in
relation to the availability of recruitment records.
People and relatives told us they felt safe at the service. People were protected from the risk of abuse or harm because staff knew the action to take should they suspect or witness any abuse. Risks to people were assessed and appropriately managed to ensure people received safe care. Appropriate infection control practices were followed by staff. Learning from incidents was discussed and shared with staff.
Staffing levels were determined by the level of individual care required for people using the service. We had some concerns about staffing levels at night.
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.
Systems for monitoring the quality of the service were in place and regular audits took place. Continuous learning took place to improve the quality of the service provided to people. However, frequent management changes meant there was sometimes inconsistencies in the way the service was managed by different people.
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 25 February 2022).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.
At our last inspection we made a recommendation in relation to staff training in relation to medicine competency. At this inspection we found the provider had made improvements, medicine competencies had been completed for staff administering medicines.
Why we inspected
We carried out an unannounced focused inspection of this service on 14 and 15 June 2022. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve safe care and treatment, fit and proper persons employed, need for consent and good governance.
We undertook this focused inspection to check they had followed their action plan and to confirm they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions Safe and Well-led which contain those requirements. For the Effective Key Question, we checked whether the service had followed their action plan and now met the requirements of Regulation 11 (need for consent). As we only checked the part of this Key Question we had concerns about, the rating for Effective has not changed and remains requires improvement. 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 remains 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 Earlham House on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Follow up
We will meet with the provider following this report being published to discuss how they will make changes to ensure they improve their rating to at least good. We will work with the local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.