16 October 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Sydenham House is a residential care home which accommodates up to 19 people in one adapted building. Sydenham House is registered to provide care for older adults who may be living with dementia, physical disability and/or sensory impairment. At the time of this inspection 16 people were living there.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
We found improvements were needed to ensure people's risks were assessed and mitigated to keep them safe, such as the management of people’s weights, moving and handling and nighttime support.
We found improvements were also needed in relation to medicines administration and the management of environmental risks to people in areas such as the management of legionella and fire safety.
Improvements were also needed to strengthen the provider's quality auditing systems and processes of the service delivery.
The registered manager was aware that improvements needed to be made to the service and was in the process of addressing these.
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.
People and their relatives told us they felt safe living at the service.
Staff understood their responsibility to report concerns and poor practice. Staff knew how to report any incidents and accidents.
Systems were in place to engage with staff and people who use the service.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection
The last rating for this service was good (published 02 July 2018)
Why we inspected
We inspected this service because the previous inspection was more than 5 years ago, and we wanted to check the provider was still providing good quality and safe care. We undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.
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 has changed from good to requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection.
We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the safe and well led sections of this full report.
You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Sydenham House on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement and Recommendations
We have identified breaches in relation to safe care and treatment and good governance.
We made a recommendation to support the provider's systems of assessing and recording people's mental capacity.
Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.
Follow up
We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.