Archived: Turnpike Court Residential Care Home

At the time of the inspection there was a home manager in post, who had recently transferred there from another CLS location in October 2015. She had made an application to the Care Quality Commission to become the registered manager and was awaiting the outcome of this application. 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 manager was available for part of the inspection and engaged positively with the inspection process. The manager was friendly and approachable; she operated an open door policy for people using the service, staff and visitors.

People told us that they felt safe and told us that they received the support that they needed, in a way that respected their wishes. There were sufficient numbers of staff to meet the needs of people. We noted that the current arrangements for staff breaks over the lunchtime period should be reviewed to ensure that maximum staff were available during this busy period. The manager assured us that the tool made available by the provider to calculate the numbers of staff required based on the needs of the people using the service would be fully implemented.

The provider had recently recruited a number of new staff members, which meant that the use of agency staff would no longer be required. Staff members had a thorough induction process when joining the service, as well as regular on-going training.

Staff had an understanding of the abuse and safeguarding procedures which should be followed to report abuse and people had risk assessments in place to enable them to be as independent as possible. Effective recruitment processes were in place and followed by the service.

People's consent was gained before any care was provided and the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act were met.

People were able to choose the food and drink that they wanted and staff supported people with this.

People told us that they were well cared for and treated with compassion. Staff supported people in a caring manner. They knew the people they were supporting well and understood their requirements for care. People were treated with dignity and respect.

Care records were personalised and up to date; they reflected the support that people needed so that staff could understand how to care for the person appropriately. We noted that some of the life plans held more detailed information than others; the manager told us that this had already been identified as an area for further improvement. We saw that staff responded to people’s changing needs and sought involvement from outside health professionals as required.

People were able to take part in a range of activities should they choose to. An activities organiser arranged an entertainment programme and also provided one to one support to individuals.

The home was well led. There were good quality assurance systems in place, to enable areas for improvement to be identified

We spoke to one relative who was very pleased with the care that their family member was receiving. They told us; "They get looked after well here. We don't have to worry anymore."

We spoke to four members of staff including the home services manager. They all said that they enjoyed working at the home and had lots of support and training to do their jobs. We looked at the training records and saw that that all the staff had mandatory training and additional training according to their job roles.

We looked at the safeguarding policies and procedures and found that adequate arrangements were in place to protect people from the risk of harm or abuse. We also looked at the arrangements in place for recruiting new staff and saw that checks were made to try to ensure that staff were suitable to work with vulnerable people.

We looked at the complaints procedure and the complaints log, spoke to three people who lived in the home and one relative and spoke to two members of staff. We found that procedures were in place to manage complaints and people were knowledgeable about them.

One person said 'Staff always talk to me and ask me about my care'.

When asked about the choice of food, they all said there was a large choice for breakfast and they were always consulted on their choice of meals for the day from the menu each morning. One person said 'the food is really good, you get plenty to eat'.

Another person said 'I like sitting with my friends, we all sit together'.

We spoke to people visiting the home. One person said 'I am very involved with the care'. They also said 'I can't fault the care here'. Other visitors told us they were happy with the staff and one person said' I have no problems at all'.

Two people visiting their relative said they had encountered a few problems but were able to discuss them with the manager.

We found evidence that the provider operated a system for feedback and we viewed feedback forms and founds comments like 'I am very happy here' and 'I wouldn't be as well as I am if I didn't live here'. However, we found the provider was not operating an effective complaints system which addressed concerns and complaints raised by people living in the home and visitors which may result in people being put at risk.