The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has told Low Lane House in Middlesbrough, to make urgent improvements following an inspection in June.
CQC carried out this unannounced focused inspection after receiving concerns in relation to incidents and management oversight, staffing levels and lack of staff training.
Following the inspection, Low Lane House has been rated inadequate overall and inadequate for being safe and well-led. It is rated requires improvement for being effective. Caring and responsive were not looked at during this inspection, therefore the previous rating of good remain for those areas. It was previously rated good overall and good in all five domains. The service has now been placed in special measures.
Low Lane House, run by Action for Care Limited, is a residential care home for up to six young adults who live with a learning disability and/or autism. At the time of inspection, six people were living at the service.
Debbie Ivanova, CQC’s deputy chief inspector for people with a learning disability and autistic people said:
“When we inspected Low Lane House, we had several serious concerns for people living there. The overall quality of the service had significantly deteriorated since our last inspection.
“People were being let down by staffing numbers. There weren’t always enough on duty to keep people safe and give them the support they needed. Particularly during the night when there were not enough staff to help people with personal care, carry out restraint or to safely evacuate the building if a fire occurred. As some staff training was out of date, they weren’t always skilled in recognising or responding to these kinds of risks.
“Inspectors found that people weren’t always protected from the risk of abuse. In communal areas, people could cause physical or emotional harm to others while receiving care from staff. When incidents took place, the needs of other people were not recognised to ensure people were safe and protected from avoidable harm.
“During the inspection, we sent a letter to the provider explaining our serious concerns and told them to make improvements as a matter of urgency to keep people safe.
“The provider has started to make changes to reduce risk, and we will continue to monitor them to make sure more improvements are made and embedded. If we are not satisfied that our concerns have been addressed, we will not hesitate to take the necessary action so that people receive the safe care they deserve.”
Inspectors found the following issues at the service:
- Risk was not safely managed, in particular people were not safeguarded from the risks of abuse
- Fire safety actions had not been addressed
- There were insufficient staff on duty to safely care for people
- Medicine records lacked the detail needed to ensure people received effective and safe treatment
- Infection prevention and control guidance was not followed, and the service needed cleaning
- Although some areas for improvement had been identified to improve quality assurance for leaders, current systems were not effective. For example, the current registered manager was no longer based at Low Lane House
- There were gaps in the support which staff received
- Support for people's mental health needs was not always adequate. Best practice guidance was not used to support people's care
- The environment had not been maintained and this impacted upon people's dignity
- People were not consistently supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff did not consistently support them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests, the policies and systems in the service did not consistently support this practice.
However:
- People were supported with their nutritional intake
- Staff were supportive of each other and of the manager who was based at the service.
Full details of the inspection are given in the report published on our website.
For enquiries about this press release please email regional.engagement@cqc.org.uk.
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.