Archived: Glendale Residential Care Home

Updated 13 April 2017

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked 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.’

This inspection took place on 1 March 2017 and was unannounced.

This inspection was carried out by one three inspectors 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. The Expert by Experience had experience of providing care and support for an older person.

Before the inspection, the provider completed a Provider Information Return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We also reviewed other information that we held about the service such as statutory notifications. This is information providers are required to send us by law to inform us of significant events. We also made contact with the local safeguarding authority and reviewed information sent to us from stakeholders.

We spoke with nine people who were able to verbally express their views about the quality of the service they received and five people’s relatives. Some people were not able to verbally communicate their views of the service to us and therefore, we observed interactions and how care and support was provided to these people throughout our inspection.

We looked at records in relation to four people’s care. We spoke with the manager, deputy manager, the cook and four care staff. During our inspection we spoke with one healthcare professional and stakeholders prior to our inspection.

We looked at records relating to the management of medicines, four recently employed staff recruitment records, staff training, risk assessments and systems for monitoring the quality and safety of the service.

Updated 13 April 2017

This inspection took place on the 1 March 2017 and was unannounced.

Glendale Residential Care Home provides accommodation and personal care support for up to 20 older people who require 24 hour care and support including people living with dementia. On the day of our inspection there were 15 people living at the service.

The service had employed a manager and who had been registered since 2010. 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.

Visits from environmental health inspectors and a fire officer highlighted a number of areas where action was required by the provider to improve the safety of the environment and protect people from the risk of harm. Fire doors were wedged open. Food and hygiene safe practices were not followed to safeguard people from the risk of harm.

People’s medicines were not managed safely and effectively. We were not assured that people received their medicines as prescribed. Improvements were needed in the way that people were supported with their medicines and how this was recorded and monitored.

We found a lack of sufficient measures in place to ensure the safety of people during procedures where staff were required to support people with their moving and handling transfers.

The provider did not operate a safe and robust system when recruiting staff. Checks on the suitability of staff including Disclosure and Barring (DBS) checks had not been carried out on all staff prior to their starting employment.

Staff were not to be provided with the full range of training required, relevant to their roles which would provide them with the skills and knowledge to keep people safe. This failure to consider, plan and provide for the range of skills required put people at risk of their health, welfare and safety needs not being met.

There was a lack of nationally recognised assessment tools in place to monitor people at risk of malnutrition. People’s weight was not always effectively monitored and where people had lost significant amounts of weight, referrals to a GP or dietician for specialist advice and support had not been actioned. This placed people at risk.

The majority of interactions we saw were respectful and supported people's dignity; however improvements were required to provide privacy and dignity for people when using the upstairs shower. People were not always involved in making decisions about their care.

People were being put at risk of not having their welfare and safety needs met as there was a failure to ensure that people were protected from the risks associated with improper operation of the premises. The provider had failed to respond fully to improve the safety of the environment to protect people from the risk of harm in response to fire officer visits.

The quality of the internal assurance systems in place were not robust enough to identify the shortfalls that we identified at this inspection. The provider failed to identify and mitigate the potential risks to people’s health, welfare and safety.

The provider had a system in place to respond to complaints. However, complaints had been logged but the provider did not provide an audit trail of any response with a record of the steps taken to resolve complaints in a timely manner to the complainant’s satisfaction.

During this inspection we identified a number of breaches of the 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.