Franklyn Lodge

Updated 17 March 2021

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 care homes with outbreaks of coronavirus, we are conducting reviews to ensure that the Infection Prevention and Control practice was safe and the service was compliant with IPC measures. This was a targeted inspection looking at the IPC practices the provider has in place.

This inspection took place on 10 February 2021 and was announced.

Updated 17 March 2021

About the service

Franklyn Lodge is a care home which provides accommodation and personal care for a maximum of nine adults who have autism and learning disabilities. At the time of this inspection, there were nine people using the service.

The service had been developed taking into account best practice guidance and the principles and values underpinning Registering the Right Support (RRS). The service had mitigated against environmental factors that would otherwise make the environment feel institutional. For example, there were deliberately no identifying signs, intercom, cameras or anything else outside to indicate it was a care home.

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

Quality assurance systems had not been used effectively to identify concerns we identified during this inspection. We found no evidence people had been harmed, however, systems were either not in place or robust enough to demonstrate safety was effectively managed. Mainly, we found the culture at the service did not promote person centred care. This was evident across all areas where we identified shortfalls.

The service did not apply the full range of the principles and values of RRS and other best practice guidance. These ensure that people who use the service can live as full a life as possible and achieve the best possible outcomes that include control, choice and independence. The outcomes for people did not fully reflect the principles and values of RRS for the following reasons. We found people followed a set of generic routines, which was not consistent with person centred care.

People were not always protected from potential harm. Risk assessments for people with behaviours that challenged the service did not follow positive behaviour support approaches. PBS is a person-centred approach, recommended to support people with learning disabilities who display behaviours that challenge. The risk assessments did not identify specific factors that contributed to people’s behaviours. There was a risk that staff could miss specific triggers and would not be able to support the person fully to minimise the likelihood of the behaviour happening in the first instance.

Staff were not deployed effectively. From the records reviewed, it was not clear how many staff were scheduled to work per shift. We noted irregularities as staff who were rostered to work, were not the same as those completing the handover records on the specified dates. The irregularities in deployment of staff meant we could not be assured that people’s needs were being sufficiently met.

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 26 June 2019).

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to staffing, quality of risk assessments and person centred care. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.

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.

We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvement. Please see the safe and well-led sections of this full report.

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 Franklyn Lodge on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.