The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Newhaven, a care home in Wallasey, Merseyside, as inadequate and taken action to protect people, following an inspection in December last year.
Newhaven is run by a company registered as Mr Danny So and provides personal care for up to 16 people with a learning disability.
A focused inspection was carried out due to concerns CQC received regarding the safety and quality of care in the home.
The home’s overall rating has dropped from good to inadequate, as has the rating for how safe it is. Well-led has moved from requires improvement to inadequate. Effective, caring and responsive were not looked at as part of this inspection and retain their previous ratings of good.
During the inspection, CQC found four breaches of regulations in relation to providing safe care and treatment, staffing, monitoring and assessing risk, and how well the home was being managed.
CQC issued a warning notice following the inspection to focus their attention on making significant improvements around people’s care and treatment, and the management of the service.
Karen Knapton, CQC deputy director of operations in the north, said:
When we inspected Newhaven, it was disappointing to find a deterioration in the level of care being provided. Poor leadership had led to shortfalls in the quality of care, placing people at risk of harm.
During the inspection, we found breaches of regulations in relation to providing safe care and treatment, management oversight of the home, managing risks, and staffing.
Leaders didn’t always investigate or report incidents appropriately and hadn’t created a culture where staff could learn from incidents to try and prevent them from happening again.
Leaders hadn’t always identified or addressed safety risks at the home. Risk assessments weren’t in place across several areas of the home, including for individual residents. They also hadn’t addressed environmental risks. For example, equipment used to support people hadn’t been serviced, legionella infection risks weren’t addressed, and fire safety and carbon monoxide alarms tests hadn’t been recorded.
Leaders also hadn’t ensured staff received the right supervision, training and support to provide safe care. They weren’t regularly assessing staff competency or reviewing training compliance. This included training to protect people from abuse and in the individual medical conditions of the people they cared for.
We have told Newhaven where we expect to see rapid and widespread improvements and will continue to monitor the home closely to keep people safe during this time. We will return to check on their progress and won’t hesitate to use our regulatory powers further if people aren’t receiving the care they have a right to expect.
Inspectors found:
- Poor infection control, with no cleaning schedules or infection risk assessments in place. Several mattresses required deep cleaning, although staff addressed this immediately after it was raised.
- Medicines were not always managed safely and had been given to people who they were not prescribed for. Medicines which needed refrigeration were left out, open medicines were not dated or used within expiry timeframes, and audits and risk assessments were not in place.
- Care plans were out of date and people weren’t always at the centre of their care and treatment options or involved in decision making.
- Newhaven did not regularly engage with people to seek feedback and make improvements at the home.
However:
- Staff treated people with kindness and compassion. People and their relatives generally spoke positively about the care they received and support from staff.
The report will be published on CQC’s website in the coming days.
