Archived: Lauriston House

Updated 15 December 2014

We visited Lauriston House on 4 and 6 August 2014 to carry out this inspection. We talked with 16 people who used the service and 10 relatives. We spoke with four care staff, an activities coordinator, two registered nurses, the organisations compliance officer and the registered manager.

Before the inspection we reviewed information we held about the provider, including the provider’s information return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We also contacted the local authority that commissions the service to obtain their views.

The inspection team consisted of an inspector, a specialist nurse advisor and an expert by experience. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of service.

We observed care and support in communal areas and saw how people were being supported with their meals during lunchtime. We looked at records about people’s care, including seven care files of people who used the service. We looked at records relating to the management of the home for example, staff recruitment and staff training records, safeguarding records, quality monitoring reports and records of incidents accidents and complaints.

This report was written during the testing phase of our new approach to regulating adult social care services. After this testing phase, inspection of consent to care and treatment, restraint, and practice under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) was moved from the key question ‘Is the service safe?’ to ‘Is the service effective?

The ratings for this location were awarded in October 2014. They can be directly compared with any other service we have rated since then, including in relation to consent, restraint, and the MCA under the ‘Effective’ section. Our written findings in relation to these topics, however, can be read in the ‘Is the service safe’ sections of this report.

Updated 15 December 2014

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and to pilot a new inspection process being introduced by CQC which looks at the overall quality of the service.

This was an unannounced inspection. At our last inspection on 22 November 2013, we found that the provider was meeting the regulations we checked.

Lauriston House provides nursing and personal care for to older people and is situated in the London Borough of Bromley. At the time of the inspection the home was providing nursing care and support to 37 people. There was a registered manager in place. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service and has the legal responsibility for meeting the requirements of the law; as does the provider.

People using the service told us they felt safe and that staff treated them well. Safeguarding adults from abuse procedures were robust and staff understood how to safeguard the people they supported.

There was good contact with healthcare professionals. A GP visited the home twice a week to attend to people’s needs and people had access to a range of visiting health care professionals such as dentists, dieticians, opticians and chiropodists. There were appropriate arrangements in place to support people using the service with their medicines.

People said they knew how to make a complaint if they needed to. They were confident the provider would listen to them and they were sure their complaints would be fully investigated and action taken if necessary.

Staff said they felt well supported by the manager and senior members of staff and there was an out of hours on call system in operation that ensured management support and advice was always available when they needed it.

People using the service and the relatives we spoke with said they had noticed significant improvements at the home since the provider, Orchard Care Homes.com (3) Limited, and the current management team took over in April 2013. One relative said, “The manager is very good; he has pulled this place from the ashes.” The local authority that commission services from the provider said the home had experienced 12-18 months of “great unrest” however things had settled down. They said the manager had put a lot of effort into improving the quality of the service.