19 June 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Elworth Grange is a residential care home supporting up to 66 people with a variety of needs, including dementia. Accommodation is purpose built and is provided across three floors, consisting of individual bedrooms with en-suite facilities and access to a range of communal areas. At the time of our inspection there were 50 people using the service.
Peoples experience of using the service had what we found
People were happy with the care they received. One person’s account of their experiences raised an issue wheret they felt some staff did not always take their specific communication needs and style into account. This combined with training for staff in effective communication is raised as a recommendation in this report.
People felt safe and happy with the approach of the staff team. The service had sent key information to the local authority relating to care concerns each month. A safeguarding referral had been made following information received and this is currently under consideration by safeguarding teams.
Risk assessments were in place relating to the hazards faced by people in their daily lives and had been taken into account. These assessments extended to checks of equipment safety and other equipment used by people.
Staffing levels met the needs of people with observations made of staff responding to people promptly. People we spoke with confirmed there were enough staff. The staffing compliment had relied on agency staff, but new staff had been recruited appropriately.
The environment remained clean and hygienic throughout.
The manager of the service had been appointed prior to the inspection. While information on the deregistration of the previous manager had been received, the provider had not informed us of management arrangements. This was done retrospectively.
Robust quality assurance systems were in place and people living at Elworth, their relatives and staff had the chance to express their views.
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. While arrangements for ensuring people had deprivation of liberty safeguards in place to protect them; one person’s DoLS had expired and had lapsed for a short time. We have raised this as a recommendation in this report for the provider to improve oversight of DoLS applications.
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 this service was requires improvement (published 13 January 2022) a breach in governance of the service was identified. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service. 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. 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 Requires Improvement to Good based on the findings of this inspection. You can read the report from our last inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Elworth Grange on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.