Verwood House Care Home

Verwood House is a purpose-built nursing home registered to provide care for up to 42 people. The home was divided into four separate living units. At the time of our inspection there were 13 people living there. This was due to a major refurbishment taking place. The people living in the home had complex care needs associated with their dementia.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

Since the last inspection, the ownership of the registered provider had changed.

At the last inspection, we found a breach in regulations relating to systems to monitor and improve the quality and safety of the service. These issues had been fully addressed at this inspection.

Care was personalised and met individual needs. Staff knew people very well, cared about them and understood their care and support needs as well as the risks people faced.

People’s needs were regularly assessed and reviewed in detail and action was taken to respond to people's changing needs. People received their medicines when they were needed and in ways that suited them.

There were enough staff to meet people's needs. Safe recruitment practices were followed, and appropriate checks completed to ensure that only suitable staff were employed. We have made a recommendation about one of the checks that is completed.

Staff received induction training and support that enabled them to carry out their roles positively and effectively. They had also completed safeguarding training and understood their role in identifying and reporting any concerns of potential abuse or poor practice.

Following a recent programme of refurbishment, the home was well decorated, furnished and equipped. Staff understood the importance of cleanliness and infection control. The home was clean and well maintained throughout and appropriate measures had been put in place to manage the risks associated with Covid-19.

The service had a quality assurance system in place to enable the quality of care people received to be monitored. There were numerous audits and checks carried out. Information from these was analysed and where any issues or concerns had been identified, action had been taken to address these.

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 requires improvement (published 2 November 2018). At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to people not receiving the care they needed and staffing. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well led only.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.

We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the safe key question. We look at this in all care home inspections even if no concerns or risks have been identified. This is to provide assurance that the service can respond to coronavirus and other infection outbreaks effectively.

We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from the concerns that were raised with us. Please see the safe and well led sections of this full report.

The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good. 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 Verwood House on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.