Blyford Residential Home

Updated 25 June 2019

The inspection:

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

Inspection team:

This inspection was carried out by one inspector.

Service and service type:

Blyford Residential Home is a care home for older people, some of whom were living with dementia. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided in line with the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations.

Notice of inspection: This inspection was unannounced.

What we did:

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. This included details about incidents the provider must notify us about. We assessed the information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection, we spoke with four people who used the service and two relatives to ask about their experience of the care provided. We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us.

We spoke with the deputy manager, operations manager, three care staff and two external health professionals. We looked at six records in relation to people who used the service. We also looked at staff files as well as records relating to the management of the service, recruitment, policies, training and systems for monitoring quality.

Updated 25 June 2019

About the service: Blyford Residential Home provides accommodation and personal care for up to 44 older people, some of whom were living with dementia. At the time of our visit 43 people were using the service.

What life is like for people using this service:

People who live at Blyford Residential Home have their needs met by sufficient numbers of suitably trained staff. Staff were kind and caring towards people and knew them as individuals.

The environment was comfortable and safe. The service had been recently redecorated and people had input into how their home looked.

People were supported to remain engaged and had appropriate access to meaningful activity. People were offered a choice of good quality, nutritional meals. The service managed the risk of people becoming malnourished or dehydrated and protected them from harm.

People received the support they required at the end of their life.

Care plans were personalised and contained sufficient information about people for staff to refer to. Staff knew people well.

Healthcare professionals from external organisations made positive comments about the care people received and the management of the service.

The registered manager and deputy manager were open, honest, transparent and learned lessons when things went wrong. Prompt and robust action was taken to address shortfalls.

Robust quality assurance systems were in place to identify areas for service development and improvement. Significant work had been undertaken to address shortfalls identified at our last inspection.

The service worked well with other organisations to ensure people had joined up care. People were supported to have input from external healthcare professionals.

People and their representatives were involved in the planning of their care and given opportunities to feedback on the service they received. People’s views were acted upon.

See more information in Detailed Findings below.

Rating at last inspection: Requires Improvement (report published 7 June 2018).

Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection based on the rating at the last inspection.

Follow up: Going forward we will continue to monitor this service and plan to inspect in line with our reinspection schedule for those services rated Good.