Andrews Court Care Home

Updated 16 July 2022

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

As part of CQC’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic we are looking at how services manage infection control and visiting arrangements. This was a targeted inspection looking at the infection prevention and control measures the provider had in place. We also asked the provider about any staffing pressures the service was experiencing and whether this was having an impact on the service.

This inspection took place on 28 June 2022 and was announced. We gave the service 24 hours’ notice of the inspection to ensure the provider was available.

Updated 16 July 2022

About the service

Andrews Court Care Home is a residential care home providing personal care to 34 people aged 65 and over at the time of the inspection. The care home is in a converted church and can accommodate up to 35 people on two floors.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

People told us they felt safe and well cared for in Andrews Court Care Home. However, we found staff had not always been safely recruited, important checks regarding the environment had not been completed since July 2020 and medicines were not always managed safely. Our findings showed the provider’s systems for monitoring the quality of the service had not been effective.

Staff had completed training in safeguarding and knew the correct action to take to keep people safe. The manager used handovers and staff meetings to share any learning from incidents or accidents. Staffing levels were sufficient to ensure people had their needs met in a timely way.

The home did not have a registered manager. There was a manager responsible for running the home, but the provider had failed to ensure they had applied to register with CQC in a timely manner. The manager demonstrated a commitment to addressing our findings during the inspection. They had worked hard to ensure the home was Covid 19 secure and our inspection confirmed staff followed safe infection control practices.

Staff told us they enjoyed working in the home and found the manager to be approachable and always willing to listen to them. People who lived in the home also gave us positive feedback about the manager and told us they would be confident to approach them if they had any concerns about their care.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published January 2018)

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted following a number of safeguarding alerts raised with the local authority and whistleblowing concerns raised with CQC during the pandemic. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.

We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the Safe key question. We look at this in all care home inspections even if no concerns or risks have been identified. This is to provide assurance that the service can respond to coronavirus and other infection outbreaks effectively.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.

The overall rating for the service has changed from good to requires improvement. This is based on the findings at this inspection.

Enforcement

We are mindful of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our regulatory function. This meant we took account of the exceptional circumstances arising as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic when considering what enforcement action was necessary and proportionate to keep people safe, as a result of this inspection. We will continue to discharge our regulatory enforcement functions required to keep people safe and to hold providers to account where it is necessary for us to do so.

We identified breaches of regulations in relation to the recruitment of staff, the administration of medicines, the safety of the premises and the processes to monitor the quality and safety of the service.

You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Andrews Court Care Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.