Archived: Park Street Home

Updated 14 January 2016

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This was an unannounced inspection which took place on 26 November 2015. This inspection was carried out by two inspectors. Before our inspection, we reviewed information we had received in relation to the home; which included any incident notifications they had sent us.

During the inspection we spoke with one person who lived at the home in detail and five visitors. We asked them to share their experiences and views with us. We were not able to speak in detail with other people due to their level of dementia. We also spoke with the provider, registered manager and three staff members. We observed how people were supported and looked at four people’s care records. We also made observations of the care that people received.

We looked at records relating to the management of the home such as the staffing rota, policies, incident and accident records, recruitment and training records and audit reports.

Updated 14 January 2016

This inspection took place on 26 November 2015 and was unannounced. When Park Street Home was last inspected in December 2013 there were no breaches of the legal requirements identified.

Park Street Home is a residential dementia care home without nursing and provides care and support for up to ten older people. On the day of our inspection the home was at full occupancy.

The service has a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The provider did not have adequate processes in place to ensure the safe management and administration of medicine. Areas which required further development included processes for recording medicine protocols and guidance for staff, covertly administered medicines and medicine disposal.

The Department of Health guidance on the prevention and control of infection had not been followed. The home used communal hand towels and laundry processes which did not follow the guidance. This increased the risk of cross-infection.

The staff had received training regarding how to keep people safe and they were aware of the service safeguarding and whistle-blowing policy and procedures.

Staffing numbers were sufficient to meet people’s needs and this ensured people were supported safely. Staff we spoke with felt the staffing level was appropriate.

Staff demonstrated a detailed knowledge of people’s needs and had received training to support people to be safe and respond to their care needs. However staff supervision had been irregular and was being improved by the registered manager.

Care provided to people met their needs. Care records provided personalised information about how to support people. People were involved in regular activities.

The staff had a basic understanding of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. These safeguards aim to protect people living in care homes and hospitals from being inappropriately deprived of their liberty. These safeguards can only be used when a person lacks the mental capacity to make certain decisions and there is no other way of supporting the person safely. Meetings had been arranged in order to enable people’s best interest to be assessed when it had been identified that they lacked the capacity to consent to their care and treatment.

There was a robust staff recruitment process in operation designed to employ staff that would have or be able to develop the skills to keep people safe and support individuals to meet their needs.

People had their physical and mental health needs monitored. The service maintained daily records of how people’s needs were meet and this included information about medical appointments with GP’s and dentists for example.

There were positive and caring relationships between staff and people at the service. People praised the staff that provided their care and we received positive feedback from people’s relatives and visitors . Staff respected people’s privacy and we saw staff working with people in a kind and compassionate way when responding to their needs.

There was a complaints procedure for people, families and friends to use and compliments were also recorded.

We saw that the service took time to work with and understand people’s individual way of communicating in order that the service staff could respond appropriately to the person.

The provider had quality monitoring systems in place which were used to improve the service.

We found a breach of Regulation 12 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 at this inspection. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.