About the service Mill House is a care home providing personal and nursing care for up to 45 people aged 65 and over. At the time of the inspection there were 24 people living at Mill House across two floors, each of which had separate adapted facilities.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
A new manager had been appointed and planned to register with CQC. The existing interim manager had a clear vision for the service and spoke positively about the changes they needed to make. This was being handed over to the new manager who was taking over the service. The provider had organised additional support for the service whilst the new management team settled, and they were working together to complete their service improvement plan.
We found some improvements were needed to ensure some people's risk assessments and risk management plans were accurate and updated; for example, people's risk of choking needed to be reviewed and updated as their needs changed. This would ensure that staff had up to date care records to refer to when supporting people. The provider had identified this as an area that required improvement through their own quality monitoring. Some time was needed for the manager to settle within the role and to complete their improvement plan before we could judge it to be effective in bringing about the required improvements.
People’s relatives told us people felt safe living at Mill House. The provider was monitoring and reviewing the staffing levels to ensure sufficient numbers of staff remained deployed to meet people's needs.
People were supported to receive their medicines safely and as prescribed.
Staff understood their responsibility to report concerns and poor practices.
We observed staff were kind and caring and treated people with dignity and respect.
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 had access to a range of activities and events organised by the service's activities team.
Staff provided mixed feedback about the service and felt the changes in management over time had a detrimental impact on the moral of the team.
The service had infection control processes and systems in place to reduce the risk of people contracting COVID-19.
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 (report published 23 July 2019).
Why we inspected
We undertook this inspection as part of a random selection of services rated Good and Outstanding to test the reliability of our new monitoring approach.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.