Lee Mount Residential Home, Halifax, is rated as Inadequate by the Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has told Lee Mount Healthcare Limited that they must make urgent improvements at Lee Mount Residential Home in Halifax in order to ensure the safety and wellbeing of people living there.

During an unannounced inspection in June this year inspectors found that the provider was failing to provide care which was safe, effective, responsive to people’s needs or well led.

Under CQC’s programme of inspections, all adult social care services are being given a rating to help people choose care. Overall, Lee Mount Residential Home has been rated as Inadequate.

A full report from the inspection has been published on the CQC website: www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-128178529.

The report highlights a number of areas of concern, including:

• There were insufficient staff to make sure the needs of people living at the home could be appropriately met.
• Due to the apparent lack of staff the home was not able to be hygienically cleaned thoroughly, many areas were odorous and in need of repair.
• Although staff had received safeguarding training inspectors found evidence of incidents having occurred which had not been reported in line with procedure and staff had failed to recognise incidents that could be considered as safeguarding concerns.
• People’s freedom to move around the home was restricted and some may have been deprived of their liberty unlawfully.
• People had their needs assessed but there were no care plans in place so staff had no clear instruction on how to best care for people living there or receive updates when a person’s needs changed.
• The homes complaints procedure was out of date and complaints were not being recorded. People’s feedback was not consistently sought, valued or acted upon.

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

“At our recent inspection we found many areas of unsafe care and treatment and it was clear the provider was not supporting the service in an effective way.

“It is unacceptable that the provider has allowed the service to deteriorate in this way. Systems should be in place to monitor the quality of the service, and it is of significant concern that the provider did not have such systems in place to halt the deterioration in the service.

“The provider has 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.

“Because of our findings we are currently considering the need for further regulatory action against the service, to protect the rights of the people there, but due to legal reasons we cannot comment further at this stage."

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.