Archived: Forest View Care Home

Updated 19 January 2016

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Before we visited the home we checked the information that we held about the service and the service provider. This included any notifications and safeguarding alerts. We also contacted the local borough contracts and commissioning team that had placements at the home, the local Healthwatch and the local borough safeguarding team.

The inspection team consisted of two inspectors, a specialist advisor with a background in nursing and dementia care and an expert-by-experience. An expert-by-experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

During our inspection we observed how the staff interacted with people who used the service and also looked at people’s bedrooms and bathrooms with their permission. We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a specific way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us. We spoke with nine people who lived in the service and four relatives during the inspection. We spoke with the registered manager, the deputy manager, one senior care worker, three care workers, and the chef. We looked at 12 care files, staff duty rosters, four staff files, a range of audits, minutes for various meetings, medicines records, finances records, accidents and incidents, training information, safeguarding information, health and safety folder, and policies and procedures for the service.

Updated 19 January 2016

We inspected Forest View Care Home on 7 and 10 December 2015. This was an unannounced inspection.

Forest View Care Home provides accommodation and support with personal care for up to 24 older people who have dementia care needs. There were 22 people living at the home when we visited. There was a registered manager at the service at the time of our inspection. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The registered manager had an understanding of her role in relation to the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) and Deprivation of liberty Safeguards (DoLS). However, staff we spoke with did not. Mental capacity assessments had not always been completed for people to assess whether they had the capacity to make informed decisions.

The experiences of people who lived at the home were positive. People told us they felt safe living at the home, staff were kind and compassionate and the care they received was good. We found staff had a good understanding of their responsibility with regard to safeguarding adults.

People’s needs were assessed and their preferences identified as much as possible across all aspects of their care. Risks were identified and plans were in place to monitor and reduce risks. People had access to relevant health professionals when they needed them. Medicines were stored and administered safely.

Staff undertook training and received regular supervision to help support them to provide effective care. People told us they liked the food provided and we saw people were able to choose what they ate and drank.

People’s needs were met in a personalised manner. We found that care plans were in place which included information about how to meet a person’s individual and assessed needs. The service had a complaints procedure in place.

Staff told us the service had an open and inclusive atmosphere and senior staff were approachable and accessible. The service had various quality assurance and monitoring mechanisms in place. These included surveys, audits and staff and resident meetings.

We found one breach of Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of this report.