Clarence House Care Home

Ratings

• Overall

  Good

• Safe

  Good

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Requires improvement

Our view of the service

Unannounced assessment visits were completed to Clarence House Care Home on 02 and 03 April 2024. This assessment was completed in part due to receiving information of concern relating the standards of care being provided. Clarence House is a residential care home, providing care and support to up to 41 people. At the time of our assessment visit, 26 people were living at the service, many of them living with dementia. The service is built across three floors with each bedroom having an ensuite toilet. People had access to shared bathrooms and communal facilities. We found some areas of risk and concern within standards of care provided, and we have identified breaches in relation to safe care and treatment including in relation to the management of people's medicines, protecting people from the risks of harm and abuse, having sufficient numbers of suitably trained and competent staff on shift and good governance and oversight of the service. Assessment findings demonstrated an overall deterioration in the standards of care service provided, with breaches of the regulations 12, 13, 17, 18 and 19 identified.

People's experience of this service

We spoke with people, and observed care provided during our on-site assessment visit, and sourced people's feedback on their lived experiences of the care provided. An expert by experience also spoke with people’s relatives by telephone. A specialist medicine management inspector completed their assessment on a separate day. Overall the feedback from people and their relatives was mainly positive. People told us the staff went ‘above and beyond’ to care for them and felt happy and safe living at Clarence House. From reviewing records relating to the care and support provided to people we identified some areas of risk that had not been identified and mitigated by the service, in relation to people’s medicines management, bowel monitoring, post falls head injury checks, repositioning to prevent the risk of pressure areas, and incidents happening when people were meant to have 1:1 staffing in place to have full oversight of their needs. Environmental risks were identified in relation to the storage of risk items such as razors, denture cleaning tablets, prescribed creams, and drink thickener. This was of particular concern due to people living at the service with dementia who were reliant on staff to pre-empt their needs and keep them safe. We identified concerns in relation to areas of the provider’s pre-employment safety processes, which placed people at potential risk of harm. We identified examples of incidents which should but had not been reported to the local authority safeguarding team and to CQC.