Care home in Cheshire is rated as Inadequate and placed into special measures by the Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has told the provider of Alsager Court Care Home with Nursing, on Sandbach Road North in Alsager that they must make urgent improvements in order to ensure the safety and wellbeing of people living there.

During an unannounced inspection of the home in May this year, inspectors found that the registered providers, Mrs Sally Roberts and Mr Jeremy Walsh, were failing to provide care which was safe, effective, caring, well led or responsive to people’s needs.

Under CQC’s programme of inspections, all adult social care services are being given a rating to help people choose care. Overall, CQC has rated Alsager Court Care Home with Nursing as Inadequate and placed the home into special measures.

A full report from the inspection has been published on the CQC website.

• The report highlights a number of areas of concern, including that there were not enough qualified, skilled and experienced staff to meet people's needs, particularly during the night time, and the home relied heavily on agency staff to ensure sufficient staff cover.
• Inspectors found that people living in the home were not kept safe due to poor medicines management, and there was a risk that people were not receiving their medicine as prescribed.
• People living at the home were being deprived of their liberty without appropriate authorisation and there were no systems in place to ensure that people’s rights were protected under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
• People were not always supported to eat and drink sufficient amounts, and inspectors found that care records were not always kept safe and secure.
• The home had not been suitably modified to support those with dementia; there was a lack of dementia friendly signage or adaptations to the environment allowing people to navigate around the home.
• The provider did not have an effective system in place to regularly assess and monitor the quality of service that people received, and whilst a new manager had been recruited, there was no evidence that the registered provider had implemented systems to achieve continuous improvements on a sustained basis.
• The provider had failed to properly notify CQC of all incidents and events, as required by law.

Debbie Westhead, CQC’s Deputy Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care in the North, said:

“It is essential that Mrs Sally Roberts and Mr Jeremy Walsh take action to address the concerns we identified at this inspection. As the registered providers they have a responsibility to ensure that people are safe and protected from the risk of harm.  All people living at the home have a right to receive care which is of a high quality, compassionate and safe.

“It is of significant concern that the service did not seek to assess the needs of the people living there under the Mental Capacity Act and operated the service with minimum levels of staff.

"Since the inspection we have been working closely with Cheshire East Council to ensure that residents are not at risk. We have placed this service in special measures and are taking further action in relation to this provider. We will report on this action when it is completed.

“We will re-inspect the home within six months to check whether sufficient improvements have been made. If we find that the service being provided remains inadequate, we will consider taking further steps to cancel its registration with CQC."

Ends

For further information please contact CQC Regional Communications Officer Mark Humphreys on 0191 233 3519.

For media enquiries about the Care Quality Commission, please call the press office on 020 7448 9401 during office hours. Journalists wishing to speak to the press office outside of office hours can find out how to contact the team here (please note: the duty press officer is unable to advise members of the public on health or social care matters).

For general enquiries, please call 03000 61 61 61.