13 September 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
St George’s is a residential care home providing personal and nursing care to up 68 people. The service provides support to older people and people living with dementia. At the time of our inspection there were 53 people using the service. People were accommodated over two floors with the upper floor being used for people living with dementia.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
People told us they felt safe and that staff treated them well. We received comments such as staff being “brilliant” and they “go above and beyond”. However, we did receive feedback consistently from both staff and people in the home that staffing levels were at times challenging. This didn’t impact on people’s safety, however it did mean that staff weren’t always able to provide the level of personalised care they would have liked to. The home were actively recruiting to fill the hours of cover required but in the interim were reliant on agency staff.
We found that some improvement was required to ensure that the service was person centred in nature. The environment of the floor for people living with dementia needed to be addressed to provide an environment more suited to people’s needs. This included for example making different areas of the floor and individual rooms, more easily identifiable. Some repair and decoration was also required, as identified in the provider’s own audit.
The registered manager and provider were working with stakeholders to make improvement. There was recognition that it would take time to embed changes and stabilise the staff team. However, the provider was proactive at sharing progress with CQC and the local authority in the form of their action plan. The registered manager was receiving support from other registered managers in the organisation and the area manager.
People were protected from the risk of abuse because staff were trained and knew how to report concerns if they had them. There were safe recruitment practices in place, including Disclosure and Barring service checks (DBS).
Risk assessments were used to identify areas where people’s safety was at risk. Where a risk was identified, measures were in place to manage that risk such as support to reposition people where pressure damage was a concern.
People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported not support 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 and update
The last rating for the service under the previous provider was good published on 1 April 2021.
At this inspection we found improvements were required and the home was rated requires improvement.
Why we inspected
The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about how the home were meeting people’s clinical needs. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks.
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 COVID-19 and other infection outbreaks effectively.
We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for St George’s Care home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
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. This is based on the findings at this inspection.
Enforcement
We found one breach of regulation in relation to staffing levels. We made a recommendation in relation to the home environment.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.