Brook House

Ratings

• Overall

  Requires improvement

• Safe

  Requires improvement

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Requires improvement

Our view of the service

Brook House is a residential care home providing personal care to older people, some of whom were living with dementia. At the time of the assessment, the service was also used by autistic people or people with a learning disability but was not registered as a specialist service. We have assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. We completed this assessment between 14 and 20 August 2024. This was a responsive assessment covering all of the quality statements under the key questions of Safe, Effective, Responsive and Well Led. We also reviewed 2 quality statements under the Caring key question. For those areas we did not assess, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. We found 3 breaches of the legal regulations in relation to safe care and treatment, dignity and respect and governance. The provider had not managed risks to people’s health and safety effectively. People’s care did not always promote their dignity. The provider’s governance systems were not effective in identifying and addressing concerns.

People's experience of this service

During the assessment we spoke with 8 people and 5 relatives and friends. We also used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us. We found people were at risk of experiencing harm due to the poor management of health and safety concerns. We found people did not always experience respectful, dignified care. People and relatives told us staff were not always easy to find and people sometimes needed to wait longer than they wanted for their care needs to be met. However, despite these concerns, we received generally positive feedback from people and those important to them about the care being provided. People spoke positively about the kind and caring attitude of staff. Relatives told us staff and managers understood people’s care needs well and were friendly and approachable.