Old Hastings House

Updated 25 March 2025

We carried out this comprehensive assessment between 10 and 19 March 2025. The assessment was carried out partly due to a recent change in ownership of the service and partly due to concerns raised relating to safety. Old Hastings House is a residential care home providing accommodation to up to 59 people who require nursing and personal care. At the time of our assessment 49 people were living at the service. The service is registered to provide support to older people including people living with dementia. We found two breaches of legislation. One related to the safe care and treatment of people. One related to the governance of the service. People’s safety was not consistently considered. There were no records of lessons learned when people experienced falls, the numbers of falls at the service had not decreased in six months. Risk assessments relating to falls were incomplete and lacked advice for staff. Some risk assessments for example, for people living with epilepsy and people self-administering medicines were missing. There had been no staff refresher training in dementia, safeguarding or manual handling and no training at all in end of life support. Medicine errors had not been recorded and not all PRN (as required) medicines had protocols in place to advise staff about administration. The governance and overview of processes had lapsed. There had been no effective auditing processes in place for the past six months. Staff had not had supervision meetings enabling them to raise concerns and issues. Care plans and risk assessments had not been reviewed or updated. People’s weights had not been overseen resulting in gains and losses not being monitored and therefore putting people at risk. There were concerns about some aspects of maintenance of the service with parts of the service not having adequate hot water supplies. The new registered manager had only been in post a few days and acknowledged these shortfalls and planned to put things right and to prioritise people’s safety. However, this would take time to embed. People’s needs had been assessed prior to moving to the service. People were treated with kindness and dignity. Care provision was person centred.

Updated 25 March 2025

Feedback from people and from their loved ones was mainly positive. People told us they felt safe and relatives told us that staff knew people well and responded to their needs. Some people highlighted the issues with lack of hot water and that at times staff seemed a little stretched. People were able to bring in small items of furniture and personal effects and the bedrooms we saw were homely, clean and free from any obvious hazards. People had been involved in pre-assessment meetings before moving into the service and although not everyone had been involved in ongoing reviews, most people told us they were confident to raise concerns or issues with staff. People were treated by a staff team that were kind, compassionate and were aware of the importance of consent and maintaining people’s independence. A person told us, “People here are treated fairly and with compassion. Staff work hard.” All relatives we spoke with told us that care was person centred. Comments included, “Yes absolutely,” “(Relative) is always at the heart of any decisions” and “I’d say very person centred.” People were able to make advanced decisions about their care. People told us that it was too early to say what the new registered manager was like, but all agreed things were better now than they had been.