29 April 2022
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Woodland Care Home is a residential care home which provides personal care and accommodation for older people and is located in Oldham, Greater Manchester. The home is registered to care for up to 18 people. At the time of this inspection, there were 16 people living at the home.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Medicines were not managed safely and we identified similar concerns to those found at our last inspection of the service in 2021. Staff displayed a good understanding of safeguarding and whistleblowing, although some said they didn’t always feel comfortable reporting concerns due to a fear of repercussion. We also received feedback about a poor culture amongst the staff team.
People were not always supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff did not always support them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests. The policies and systems in the service did not always support practice. We saw people’s movements around the service were restricted at times.
Record keeping needed to be improved, particularly regarding oral hygiene and some care plans were not always updated when people’s needs changed.
The service has a poor regulatory history with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and has been in breach of regulations at the previous four inspections with the overall ratings being inadequate and requires improvement on three occasions. Warning notices were served at our last inspection in April 2021, although due to the concerns we identified regarding medication, these had not been met.
Staff wore personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout the inspection and lateral flow testing was carried out. There were enough staff to care for people safely and correct recruitment procedures were followed. Regular checks of the building and equipment were carried out to ensure they were safe to use.
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 requires improvement (published 8 June 2021). The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection, we found not enough improvement had been made and the provider remained in breach of certain regulations.
Why we inspected
This inspection was carried out to follow up on action we told the provider to take at the last inspection.
We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the Safe key question. We look at this in all care home inspections even if no concerns or risks have been identified. This is to provide assurance that the service can respond to COVID-19 and other infection outbreaks effectively.
During this inspection we carried out a separate thematic probe, which asked questions of the provider, people and their relatives, about the quality of oral health care support and access to dentists, for people living in the care home. This was to follow up on the findings and recommendations from our national report on oral healthcare in care homes that was published in 2019 called ‘Smiling Matters’. We will publish a follow up report to the 2019 'Smiling Matters' report, with up to date findings and recommendations about oral health, in due course.
Enforcement and Recommendations
We have identified breaches in relation to people's safety, consent and leadership of the service.
We are mindful of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our regulatory function. This meant we took account of the exceptional circumstances arising as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic when considering what enforcement action was necessary and proportionate to keep people safe as a result of this inspection. We will continue to monitor the service and will take further action if needed.
The overall rating for the service is requires improvement. This is based on the findings from this inspection.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.
Follow up
We will return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.