- Care home
Elm House Care Home
Report from 7 October 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of assessment: 15 October to 29 October 2024. We previously inspected in October 2023 and there were breaches of the legal regulations. We inspected again to check that these had been met, and because of concerns we received from different agencies. At this inspection we found continued breaches of the regulations in governance, and safe care and treatment. The service was no longer in breach of the regulation around staffing and recruitment. We identified a new breach around consent. There was a lack of effective governance and management of the service, which had a detrimental impact on some aspects of safe care and treatment. People did not receive safe care in relation to their medicines, and there were high level concerns found; we asked the provider to address concerns immediately. There were gaps in people's care plans and risk assessments. We found that monitoring of people's health and wellbeing was adhoc, meaning there were lost opportunities to identify concerns and make improvements. There was a lack of effective processes around incident monitoring and safeguarding procedures, which was identified at the previous inspection in 2023. However, improvements had been made in staff training and induction, and recruitment processes. The home was kept clean and well maintained. There were effective processes to make sure equipment was in good working order, and health and safety checks were made regularly. Staff were committed to their roles and enjoyed their jobs. We observed staff being kind and caring towards people This service is being placed in/remains in special measures. The purpose of special measures is to ensure that services providing inadequate care make significant improvements. Special measures provide a framework within which we use our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of the care they provide.
People's experience of this service
During the inspection we spoke with people who lived at the home and their relatives, both face to face and on the telephone. The feedback we received was very positive. We found people felt safe and well cared for, and that staff were responsive to their needs. A person told us, "If I have an issue I just go straight to a member of staff. They usually deal with it well." Everyone we spoke with said staff were kind and caring; a person said, "The staff are always willing to hold my hand and care for me." People said they were involved in planning their care and relatives said they were always informed of any changes or concerns. People said staff knew them well, and felt that staff had the right knowledge and skills to do their jobs.