30 August 2022
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Blenheim House Care Home is a residential care home providing accommodation for people who require nursing or personal care to up to 85 people. The service provides support to people living with dementia, older people and younger adults. At the time of our inspection there were 83 people using the service.
Blenheim House Care Home provides accommodation over three floors, bedrooms can be found on each floor and provide en-suite facilities. There are various communal areas including dining rooms, lounges, cinema and a bar. There is level access to extensive well-kept gardens and parking to the front of the premises. The registered manager’s office is located adjacent to the reception area.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
People were supported by staff who spoke confidently about how they would identify potential abuse and what they would do if abuse was suspected or witnessed. Risk assessments were in place and guidance was available for staff about how they should keep people safe from avoidable harm. Medicines were managed and administered by staff who were trained, and competency checked. The temperature of the medicines fridge was not always recorded in the correct format. Staff were recruited in line with requirements. The provider used a staffing dependency tool and was working to reduce the use of agency staff across the service. We received mixed comments about staffing levels from people, relatives and staff.
Staff spoke positively about the registered manager. The provider operated checks and audits to monitor the quality and safety of care provision in the service. Staff spoke about people in a person-centred way and the provider had identified what actions needed to be taken to ensure a more person-centred service was provided. Statutory notifications were submitted in line with requirements. Lessons were learned when things went wrong, and these were shared organisationally. Staff worked with healthcare professionals to meet people’s needs.
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.
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 07 January 2020).
Why we inspected
We received concerns in relation to the management of medicines and falls. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.
We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from this concern. Please see the safe and well-led sections of this full report.
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 remained the same.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Blenheim House Care Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Recommendations
We made one recommendation in relation to recording temperatures for the medicines fridge.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.