Archived: Rendlesham Care Centre

We spoke with four people's relatives who raised concerns about the use of agency staff in the service. One person's relative said that they had been happy with the service their relative received, but they were concerned at the amount of agency staff that were used by the service. They commented that on some occasions the majority of staff on duty were agency.

We found that there were issues with the staffing levels in the service which had an effect on the care and support provided to the people who lived there.

We found that the service was not appropriately reporting and acting on concerns of abuse. This meant that the provider's procedures and processes were not robust enough to ensure that people who used the service were protected from abuse.

We sent a warning notice to the provider 21 February 2013 regarding the management of medicines. During this inspection we found that improvements had not been made.

Our inspection of 15 April 2013 also found that the provider was not meeting the standards for Regulation 22, 'Staffing,' and Regulation 10, 'Assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision.' During this inspection we found that the provider had made improvements.

We spoke with eight of the 35 people who were using the service at the time of our inspection. They told us that they were satisfied with the service they were provided with. One person said, "I am happy here, lunch was gorgeous, we always get good food." Another person said, "They (staff) really look after me."

We spent some time sitting with people in the communal areas of the service and found that staff were attentive to the needs of the people who used the service. They responded to requests for assistance promptly. Staff interacted with people in a friendly, caring and respectful manner.

Prior to our inspection we received two concerns about the staffing levels in the service. We looked into this during this inspection. We spoke with 10 people who used the service and we also spent time sitting with people in a lounge area and observed the care and support provided to people. Nine people told us that they felt that their call bells were answered promptly and that the staff responded to their requests for assistance promptly. One person said that there had been an issue when they had used the call bell and staff did not attend to them. However, they told us, "This was a one off and has not happened again." Two people told us that they were aware that the service had been, "Short of staff," for a while, but they said that this did not affect the care and support they were provided with.

People were complimentary about the approach of the staff who supported them. One person said, "They are all very good, they work hard." Another person said, "They are very kind." Another said, "They are all pretty nice people."

We visited the service at 6:00am to check what time people got up in the mornings. We found that there were four people who had got up in Oak 2 and one in Oak 1. We were able to speak with two of these people who told us that they had woken early and asked to get up. We saw two people who lived in the Chestnut unit who were having breakfast at 7:00am, they told us that they preferred to get up early and one said, 'I have always got up early, even when I was younger I got up before my parents.'

The purpose of this visit was to follow up on improvements made, which had been identified at our last inspection of 5 November 2012.

We found that there had been an improvement in the provision of activities for people living with dementia. We asked one person who used the service if they were provided with activities that interested them. They said, 'We do well for activities.' Another person said, 'There is always something on offer.'

We found that improvements were made in the ways that the staffing records were maintained which reflected the actual staffing levels for each 24 hour period. We found that improvements had been made in the management of medicines. However, there were further improvements required to achieve compliance.

We spoke with three members of care staff who demonstrated knowledge of the needs of the people they supported. We saw that the staff interacted with people in a caring, respectful and professional manner. They were attentive to the needs of the people who used the service and responded to requests for assistance promptly.

We observed the care provided to people who used the service and we saw that the staff interacted with people in a caring, respectful and professional manner. However we were concerned about the equality of opportunity provided to people during activities.

There were shortfalls in the staffing levels in the service and whilst it was noted that the provider had taken appropriate steps to employ staff to fill the shortfalls, there were times when the staffing levels did not meet with the provider's assessed dependency levels of people.