Archived: Ashley Court Care Home

Updated 20 August 2015

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 was 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 22, 23, 24 and 30 June 2015. The first day was unannounced. There was a lead inspector present throughout the inspection. A specialist advisor whose expertise was in nursing care for older people was present for one of the days. There was also an expert by experience for one of the days. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

We met and spoke with 11 of the people living in the home. Because a large proportion of the people were living with dementia 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 also spoke with six visiting relatives or friends, the regional director, the registered manager, 13 members of staff and two visiting health or social care professionals.

We did not ask the provider to complete a Provider Information Return (PIR) before our inspection. This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and what improvements they planned to make. This was because we brought the inspection forward following information we received. We reviewed the information we held about the home, which included notifications the service is required to make.

We observed how people were supported and looked at eight people’s care and support records, an additional three people’s care monitoring records and medication administration records and documents about how the service was managed. This included six staffing records, audits, meeting minutes, training records, maintenance records and quality assurance records.

Updated 20 August 2015

This was a comprehensive inspection, carried out on 22, 23, 24 and 30 June 2015. The first day was unannounced.

Ashley Court is a purpose built home and is registered to accommodate a maximum of 60 older people who require either nursing or personal care. At the time of our inspection there were 59 people living there.

The registered manager had been employed at the home since September 2014. 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 inspection was carried out in response to information of concern that was received from complainants and the local authority.

Ashley Court had been through a period of instability due to changes in the management of the home and a period where there was no registered manager employed at the home. A registered manager was appointed in September 2014. They told us that they had taken over the home at a time when it was short staffed, existing staff had not been supported and training had become out of date. They showed us an action plan with timescales that they had developed after they had had time to assess the issues at Ashley Court.

The feedback we received from people and their relatives and visitors was that staff were kind and they were happy living at Ashley Court.

We found a number of breaches of the Health and Social Care Regulations 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see the action we have told the provider to take at the back of the full version of this report.

Systems to manage the administration of medicines were not robust and meant that people may not always be receiving their medicines as they were prescribed. We could not be sure that people always received all of the food and fluids they needed to maintain good health.

Safeguarding procedures were not always followed which meant people were not protected from possible harm and improvements were needed in the systems for the prevention and management of infections.

Staff were kind and caring. Not all of the staff made meaningful connections with people and therefore not everyone received person centred care.

People told us they were consulted about their care needs and how they wished to have them met but we found that that assessments of people’s needs were not robust, care plans lacked detail and staff did not always follow instructions in care plans.

There was a range of activities available for people in the home which included exercises, quizzes and visiting entertainers. The complaints policy was satisfactory. People told us that the registered manager had an open door policy and they felt able to raise issues as necessary or make a complaint if the need should arise.

Improvements were needed in the way records were maintained and in the systems used for monitoring the quality of the service.