Archived: Parklands Residential Care Home

This service was last inspected on 22 August 2013 where it was found to be compliant in all the areas we looked at.

Parklands is a purpose built care home for older people. It is located in Poynton within easy reach of local facilities. The home has capacity to accommodate 40 people.

All the bedrooms are single rooms with hand-washing facilities. There are several communal lounges in the home, a large dining room on the ground floor and a number of bathrooms and toilets.

A garden is accessible from the back of the home and there is also an inner courtyard. Access between floors is via a passenger lift or staircases. On the day of our inspection there were 34 people living in the home.

There was no registered manager at the home. The manager had commenced in post on the day of our inspection. They had been acting up into this position since 1st December 2015 and they had yet to submit their application to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to become a registered manager of Parklands Residential Care home. 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.

At this inspection we identified breaches of the relevant regulations in respect of the need for safe care and treatment for service users and the need for consent. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.

We found that whilst people told us they felt safe that there were a number of errors in the administration of medication and whilst there was a policy for the disposal of medication, this was not being followed as a large amount of old medication was found in the medications room.

We found in a number of care plans that advice given by visiting professionals to reduce the risks to people’s health, had not always been acted upon.

We saw that the service had a safeguarding policy in place. This was designed to ensure that any safeguarding concerns that arose were dealt with openly and people were protected from possible harm. All the staff we spoke to confirmed that they were aware of the need to report any safeguarding concerns.

We looked at recruitment files for the most recently appointed staff members to check that effective recruitment procedures had been completed. We found that appropriate checks had been made to ensure that they were suitable to work with vulnerable adults.

The provider had their own induction training programme that was designed to ensure any new staff members had the skills they needed to do their jobs effectively and competently.

We asked staff members about training and they all confirmed that they received regular training throughout the year. Two staff members confirmed that they needed to update one element of their training programme and had plans in place to do this. The service had a range of policies and procedures which helped staff to refer to good practice.

There was a flexible menu in place which provided a good variety of food to people using the service.

Staff members we spoke with were positive about how the home was being managed. Throughout the inspection we observed staff interacting with each other in a professional manner. All of the staff members we spoke with were positive about the service and the quality of the support being provided.

There was an internal quality assurance system in place to review systems and help to ensure compliance with the regulations and to promote the welfare of the people who lived at the home, however actions had not always been followed up after these had been identified. For instance, on one of the care plans that we viewed, the manager had identified that some elements within the care plans had not been reviewed, however on the day of our visit, these had not been updated.

In addition to the above there were also a number of maintenance checks being carried out weekly and monthly. These included water temperature and safety checks on the fire alarm system.

People to whom we spoke expressed no concerns about their care. One person agreed they were treated properly by staff and another said the home was 'Very good on the whole'. A third person said staff were kind and did not get cross.

A relative told us the home was 'fantastic' and that staff were 'endlessly patient and courteous'.

We looked at the care records of people who lived in the home and we saw that each person's needs were assessed on admission and an appropriate care plan produced. People's needs and care plans were reassessed as necessary.

We visited the kitchen and found it to be suitable for purpose. The dining facilities were pleasant and varied. We saw people were supported or prompted to eat as needed.

The home was appropriately designed, equipped, maintained and the procedures in the event of fire were appropriate and regularly tested.

The home had a rational approach to planning its staffing levels and we saw that these were kept to with the use of bank or agency staff as necessary.

The home had a complaints procedure which was made known to residents and relatives and we saw that example complaints had been dealt with properly.