Archived: Cedar House Nursing & Residential Home

One person using the service told us, "My only complaint is that I didn't come here sooner. It's brilliant". A relative of a person using the service told us, "It's so-so". One other person using the service told us, "It's improved from last year".

We found that some areas of the home, particularly ensuite and communal bathrooms, were not clean. However, areas of the home such as the kitchen, living room, dining room and conservatory represented a good state of cleanliness. One person told us, "I haven't had my bathroom cleaned today". One other person told us, "It's alright, but my friend put a sweet under my bed sheets once and it was there for four weeks".

We found that there were not enough staff to meet the needs of people using the service. We observed that people waited considerable lengths of time for assistance from staff, and response times to some call bells were poor. One person using the service told us, "They do take a long time to answer call bells, but that's just something we have to cope with. We do need more staff, but the carers we have are brilliant".

We found that there was an effective complaints procedure in place. People's complaints were listened to, acted on and investigated appropriately.

We saw that people were able to get up at times closer to those of their choosing than they were when we last visited. One person told us that they had waited for a long time on the day of our inspection, but that they hadn't used their call bell to ask for help. Other people felt that there could sometimes be a delay but that they knew that others in the home needed to have a lot of help from staff.

We spent time in three bedrooms while we were talking to people about their care. We observed beds still unmade at around midday. The manager told us that the priority was to ensure people were provided with the care they needed first. During the course of our visit, staff started on this task.

Three people were unsure whether their call bells worked and felt that they did not. However, we tested one of these and found that it was working, although the sounder could not be heard from the person's room. For the others, the manager had a programme of testing them at regular intervals and ensuring that staff responded in a reasonable time.