Acacia Lodge

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

We assessed a number of quality statements in the Effective key question and found areas of concern. The scores for these areas have been combined with scores based on the rating from the last inspection, which was requires improvement. We identified a breach of the legal regulations. The provider did not consistently maintain appropriate systems to be assured people’s nutritional and hydration needs were always met. There was limited assurance at the time of our visits that the service was always proactive in working with statutory services to ensure people’s authorised deprivations of liberty were up to date when they lacked the mental capacity to consent to their care arrangements, The service worked with healthcare services to meet people’s health needs.

This service scored 58 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

We did not look at Assessing needs during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

People generally spoke positively about their meals. They told us, “The food is alright and I can choose what to eat” and “There’s no rush for lunch or dinner, you can stay as long as you want to take.” A person told us there were vegetarian options for them as they preferred. A relative said, “[Their family member] and I have no complaints with the food.” However, support was not provided in a way to always assure the provider that people’s nutritional and hydration needs were always met. For example, daily recording of people’s food and fluid intake were not always complete and up to date. Some people’s assessments of their skin integrity care needs were not always completed correctly.

The manager explained how only a limited number of staff were using the service’s digital care planning and recording system to record how much people ate and drank daily. We raised our concerns regarding how this system was being used with them and they acknowledged this needed to improve and took action to address this with staff. We found the manager had also arranged additional training for staff on how to use the digital system more effectively.

The provider did not always maintain appropriate systems to provide assurance people’s care needs were always assessed effectively and their nutritional and hydration needs were always met. There were gaps in the daily records of what some people were supported to eat and there was not always a clear review of people’s daily fluid intakes and a record of actions taken to respond to these concerns.

We did not look at How staff, teams and services work together during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

The service worked with healthcare services to meet people’s health needs including arranging and support people to attend health appointments. However, some staff could not always readily provide information about people’s health to healthcare professionals when they visited and this was sometimes left to senior staff. We discussed this the manager and saw they were arranging staff training to improve this.

The manager set out how they led the service to work with healthcare professionals to meet people’s healthcare needs, including nurses, opticians, chiropody and GPs.

The manager set out how they led the service to work with healthcare professionals to meet people’s healthcare needs, including nurses, opticians, chiropody and GPs.

We did not look at Monitoring and improving outcomes during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

People were supported to make decisions about their day to day care.

Staff we spoke with showed a good understanding of consent and helping people make day to day decisions about their care.

The provider had procedures in place for assessing people’s mental capacity to agree to their care or make other specific decisions when needed. There was limited assurance at the time of our visit that the service was always proactive in working with statutory services to ensure people’s authorised deprivations of liberty were up to date when they lacked the mental capacity to consent to their care arrangements. The manager maintained a log of these and was in the process of reviewing these arrangements at the time of our assessment.