CQC takes action to protect people at Dartford care home

Published: 8 November 2024 Page last updated: 8 November 2024
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The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has placed Shore Lodge – Care Home Learning Disabilities – Care Home Learning Disabilities in Dartford, Kent, into special measures to protect people following an inspection in June that also sees them rated as inadequate.

Shore Lodge – Care Home Learning Disabilities is a residential care home run by Leonard Cheshire Disability which provides personal care for autistic people or people who have a learning disability. The service can support up to 10 people. There were 8 people living at the home at the time of this inspection.

At an inspection in March CQC issued three warning notices to focus the service’s attention on the areas where immediate action needed to be taken to ensure people’s safety and how effectively the service was being managed. This inspection was to follow up on the action taken by the service and find what improvements had been put in place.

Following this inspection, the home’s overall rating has dropped from requires improvement to inadequate, as has its rating for being well-led. Safe has been rated as inadequate and effective has been re-rated as requires improvement.  The domains of responsive and caring were not reviewed at this inspection and remain as requires improvement.

The home has been placed into special measures which means it will be kept under close review to ensure people are safe whilst sufficient improvements are being made.  As well as placing the service in special measures, CQC is using its regulatory powers further.

Serena Coleman, CQC deputy director of operations in the south, said:

When we inspected Shore Lodge – Care Home Learning Disabilities, we found the service hadn’t met the requirements of the warning notices we had previously issued around people’s safety and how effectively the service was being managed and we found people living there continued to be placed at risk.

Leaders weren’t investigating incidents or taking action to learn from them, to stop them from happening again. Staff weren’t always able to identify safeguarding incidents even though they told us they had received training. When they were able to identify them, they didn’t always feel comfortable raising those concerns to leaders or external partners like CQC.

For example, one person broke a glass photo frame in their room during the night. Night staff reported the incident to day staff during handover who discovered the glass hadn’t been removed and the person had received cuts. CQC had to tell the registered manager to refer this incident to the local authority as they hadn’t done so.

Leaders didn’t support staff to have the right skills to support people safely.  Relatives and loved ones felt the service had deteriorated and the level of care was not as consistently good as it had been.

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted.

We expect to see rapid and widespread improvements and will continue to monitor people living at Shore Lodge – Care Home Learning Disabilities closely to keep them safe while this happens.

Inspectors also found:

  • Records of people’s ability to make decisions for themselves lacked detail and CQC was not assured capacity assessments had been fully completed. There were significant delays between the recorded assessment and consultation with people’s loved ones. For example, one person had 13 mental capacity assessments completed in one day. The person’s representative was not involved until almost three months later.
  • Staff training had not been improved since the previous inspection and staff did not always have the skills to support people safely.

The report will be published on CQC’s website in the next few days.

About the Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England.

We make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and we encourage care services to improve.

We monitor, inspect and regulate services to make sure they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety and we publish what we find to help people choose care.