Archived: Brook House Care Centre

Updated 21 May 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 was planned to check whether the provider is 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 25 and 26 March 2015 and was unannounced. The inspection was undertaken by two inspectors.

Before the inspection we reviewed all of the information that we held about the service. This included three previous inspection reports, statutory notifications, safeguarding alerts and feedback from service commissioners and the local authority safeguarding team.

During the inspection we spoke with eight members of staff, including four nurses, four care staff, the activities co-ordinator and the cook. We also spoke with the registered manager and interim deputy manager. We spoke with nine people who used the service and five relatives of people using the service. We reviewed a range of records as part of the inspection. This included six care plans, six staff files, seven staff supervision records, maintenance files, quality assurance audits, user services and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards authorisations.

Updated 21 May 2015

The inspection took place on 25 and 26 March 2015 and was unannounced. At the previous inspection of this service in September 2014 we found breaches of a legal requirement to do with care and welfare which we found had been met during the course of this inspection.

Brook House Care Centre provides accommodation and nursing care for up to 74 adults, including adults with disabilities and people with dementia. The service had a registered manager in post. 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 told us they felt safe using the service and were able to talk to staff if they did not feel safe and required support. However, we found that there was not always enough staff to provide safe care for people. We saw that people had to wait to receive support and that people were left unsupervised in communal areas when they required staff assistance.

Staff were not all up to date with their core training, and many members of staff had not recently completed training including safeguarding adults. Nursing staff were not up to date with their medicines training.

The service operated within the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS). The registered manager had followed the appropriate process to assess the capacity of people to make decisions and had used the least restrictive options, and obtained the correct authorisation for this.

People were given the food and drink they required to maintain a healthy diet and were able to choose the food that they wanted and their cultural and religious dietary needs were met.

People were treated with dignity and respect, and people told us that the staff were caring when supporting them and helped to maintain their independence.

People were usually provided with person-centred care, with care plans detailing their preferences and needs, although some staff had not read and did not know the contents of people's care plans. People had access to a range of activities and were able to participate in these both in and out of the home.

The service had a complaints process which was given to people using the service and their families. Relatives told us their complaints were not always acted on, but we also saw examples of written complaints with action plans and these had been completed and the complaints resolved.

The registered manager was supportive to staff and was available for people to talk to about any issues they had about their care and the service provided. Regular audits of the service were completed and improvements to the service had been made following these audits.

We found breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2010 and corresponding regulations within the Health and Social Care Act (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see what action to told the provider to take at the back of the full version of this report.