Archived: Longridge Care Home Limited

Updated 28 August 2019

The inspection:

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked 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.

Inspection team:

The inspection was carried out by one inspector and an expert by experience. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

Service and service type:

Longridge Care Home Limited is a ‘care home’. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care as single package under one contractual agreement. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

The service did not have a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. A registered manager is legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided, along with the provider.

Notice of inspection:

This inspection was unannounced.

What we did:

Before the inspection visit, we checked the information we held about the service. We reviewed other information we held about the service, such as notifications. A notification tells us information about important events that by law the provider is required to inform us about. For example; safeguarding concerns, serious injuries and deaths that had occurred at the service. We also considered information we had received from other sources including the public and commissioners of the service. We used this information to help us plan our inspection.

During the inspection we spoke with seven people who used the service and two visitors. We did this to gain people's views about the care and to check that standards of care were being met. We observed care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us. We spoke with the provider, the acting manager, five care staff, a cook and domestic staff member.

We looked at the care records of five people who used the service, to see if their records were accurate and up to date. We also looked at records relating to the management of the service. These included staff recruitment files, training records, incident reports, medicines administration records and quality assurance records.

Updated 28 August 2019

About the service

Longridge Care Home Limited is a care home providing accommodation and personal care to 21 people aged 65 and over at the time of the inspection. The service can support up to 32 people.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

People did not consistently receive safe care. The identified risks to people’s safety had not been effectively mitigated. Areas of increased or new risk were not assessed and planned for. Staff were not aware of how to keep people safe and manage risks to safety. Medicines were not managed safely. People were not kept safe from incidents of abuse as incidents were not reported to allow investigation by outside bodies. There were insufficient suitably skilled and trained staff available to support people to meet their needs safely.

The provider had not acted to address the concerns identified in the last inspection. There were no plans in place to address the short falls and people remained at risk. The systems to monitor the quality of care were not effective in identifying concerns. Actions were not taken to make improvements where issues had been identified. There were failings in leadership and the provider was not ensuring people were kept safe and people continued to be exposed to poor care.

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 Inadequate (published 19 June 2019). At this focussed inspection improvements had not been made and the provider was still in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to the management of risks, staffing and support with people’s medicines administration. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the Key Questions of Safe and Well-led only.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. Ratings from the previous comprehensive inspection for other Key Questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.

We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the Safe and Well-led sections of this full report.

You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Longridge Care Home Limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Enforcement

We have identified breaches in relation to risk management, staffing and governance at this inspection.

Full information about CQC’s regulatory response to the more serious concerns found during inspections is added to reports after any representations and appeals have been concluded.

Follow up

We will meet with the provider following this report being published to discuss how they will make changes to ensure they improve their rating to at least good. We will work with the local authority to monitor progress. We will return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.

The overall rating for this service is ‘Inadequate’ and the service remains in ‘special measures’. This means we will keep the service under review and, if we do not propose to cancel the provider’s registration, we will re-inspect within 6 months to check for significant improvements.

If the provider has not made enough improvement within this timeframe. And there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall rating, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures. This will mean we will begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will usually lead to cancellation of their registration or to varying the conditions of their registration.

For adult social care services, the maximum time for being in special measures will usually be no more than 12 months. If the service has demonstrated improvements when we inspect it and it is no longer rated as inadequate for any of the five key questions it will no longer be in special measures.