Background to this inspection
Updated
28 April 2015
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
This inspection took place on 5 March 2015 and 9 March 2015 and was unannounced and consisted of one inspector.
The provider had not been sent a Provider Information Return (PIR) prior to this inspection. This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.
We reviewed the information we held about the service. We looked at information received from relatives and other agencies involved in people’s care. We also looked at the statutory notifications the manager had sent us. A statutory notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send to us by law. We also spoke with the local authority who did not provide us with any information that we were not already of it.
To help us understand people’s experiences of the service we spent time during the visit observing people who spent time in the communal lounge and dining areas. This was to see how people spent their time, how staff involved people and how staff provided care and support to people when required.
Most people who lived at the home had limited communication so we were only able to speak with two people to get their experiences of what it was like living at Westgrove House. We spoke with four visiting relatives, five care staff (these are defined in the report as staff). We spoke with the registered manager and one of the owners of the home. We looked at three people’s care records and other records including quality assurance checks, medicines, complaints and incident and accident records.
Updated
28 April 2015
This inspection took place on 5 March 2015 and 9 March and was unannounced.
Westgrove House is a three storey residential home which provides care to older people including people who are living with dementia. Westgrove House is registered to provide care for 21people. At the time of our inspection there were 18 people living at Westgrove House.
There was a registered manager in post at the time of our inspection. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
People told us they felt safe living at Westgrove House and staff knew how to keep people safe from the risk of abuse.
People said staff were respectful and kind towards them and we saw staff were caring to people throughout our visit. Staff protected people’s privacy and dignity when they provided care to people and staff asked people for their consent before any care was given.
Care plans contained accurate and relevant information for staff to help them provide the individual care and treatment people required. We saw examples of care records that reflected people’s wishes. We found people received care and support from staff who had the knowledge and experience to care for people as they wished.
People told us they received their medicines when required. Staff were trained to administer medicines and had been assessed as competent which meant people received their medicines from suitably trained, qualified and experienced staff.
Systems and processes were in place to recruit staff that were suitable to work in the service. Staff demonstrated a good awareness of the importance of keeping people safe. The registered manager and staff understood their responsibilities for reporting any concerns regarding potential risks of abuse.
The manager and staff had little understanding of how the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005 and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) affected the service people received. Staff understood they needed to respect people’s choices and decisions and where people had capacity, staff followed people’s wishes. Where people did not have capacity to make certain decisions, we found assessments of people’s individual capacity and records of best interests decisions had not been completed. This made it difficult to establish whether people had consented to, and received care and treatment which was in their best interest.
DoLS are safeguards used to protect people where their freedom or liberties are restricted. We found examples where people’s freedom was restricted but there were no applications made to the authorising body that showed these restrictions were authorised and least restrictive.
Regular checks were completed by the registered manager and provider to identify and improve the quality of service people received. These checks and audits helped ensure actions had been taken that led to improvements. People told us they were pleased with the service they received. If anyone had concerns, these were listened to and responded to in a timely way.
You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.