Archived: Roughcote Hall Farm

Roughcote Hall Farm provides accommodation and personal care for up to eight people with a learning disability. There were seven people using the service at the time of the inspection.

The service was not required to have a registered manager and was being managed by the provider. 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.

People were still not always given the opportunities to engage in activities that met their individual needs and preferences due to the restrictions on times of any planned community activities and the amount of people attending the activity at the same time. The provider needed to seek advice and support to ensure people were receiving the financial benefits available to them.

People were safeguarded from abuse and potential abuse as the provider and staff knew what to do if they suspected abuse had taken place.

Staffing levels had been increased and there were sufficient staff to keep people safe and meet people's assessed needs.

People's medicines were being stored and administered safely. The provider had purchased new locked facilities to ensure medicines were stored safely and implemented a new medication audit to ensure that people received their medicines at the prescribed times.

Risks of harm to people were assessed and precautions put in place to minimise the risks to people.

The provider was following the principles of the MCA 2005 by ensuring that people who lacked the capacity to consent to their care were supported to make decisions that affected their care and welfare.

People were cared for by staff that were supported and trained to fulfil their roles.

People had access to health care when they became unwell or their health needs changed.

People's nutritional needs were met and people were supported to eat food of their choice.

People were treated with dignity and respect and they felt able to talk to staff or the provider if they had any concerns about their care.

The provider had made improvements to the systems they had in place to monitor the service and had been responsive to our previous inspection findings.

Roughcote Hall Farm provided accommodation and personal care for up to eight people with a learning disability. Eight people were using the service at the time of the inspection.

The service was not required to have a registered manager and was managed by the registered provider. For the purpose of this report we will refer to them as the manager. 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.

People were not safeguarded from abuse as the management did not report incidents of alleged abuse to the local safeguarding authority for further investigation.

Risks to people were not always minimised through the effective use of risk assessments and there were insufficient staff to keep people safe.

People's medicines were not stored and administered safely.

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) provides a legal framework for making particular decisions on behalf of people who may lack the mental capacity to do so for themselves. The principles of the MCA were not followed to ensure that people were consenting or being supported to consent to their care and support. People were at risk of unlawful deprivation as referrals for a DoLS assessment had not been made for people who lacked capacity to consent to their care within the service.

Care was not always personalised and did not meet people's individual needs. Advice was not always sought from other professionals to ensure care being delivered was appropriate.

The systems the provider had in place to monitor the quality of the service were ineffective. Some staff training was out of date.

People had access to a range of hobbies and interests, however these were restricted to the day time hours due to lack of available staff.

Staff were kind and caring, however people were not encouraged to be as independent as they were able to be due to rules and routines.

People received health care when they were unwell and had sufficient to eat and drink to remain healthy.

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We saw that people received their care in a positive and caring manner and the staff were friendly and professional in their approach. One person told us, 'The staff are lovely here. They always listen to us and we get to have fun together too.'

People were supported to go out and do the things they enjoyed in their home and the local community including; going to college, arts and crafts classes, shopping and eating out. People were supported to maintain relationships with family members and friends. One person told us, 'We're out all the time, some weeks we're never in. We're always busy doing things we want to do.'

The staff told us they enjoyed working at the home. We saw that all the checks were made to ensure they were fit to do their job.

We saw that the provider had an effective system in place to assess and monitor the service, which focussed on improvement.

Medication systems were in place and monitored to ensure people received their medicines as prescribed.