• Care Home
  • Care home

Longmead Court Nursing Home

Overall: Requires improvement read more about inspection ratings

247 London Road, Black Notley, Braintree, Essex, CM77 8QQ (01376) 344440

Provided and run by:
Dovecote Care Homes Limited

Important:

We served a Warning notice on Dovecote Care Homes Limited on 9 July 2024 for failing to meet the regulation relating to good governance at Longmead Court Nursing Home.

Report from 22 April 2024 assessment

On this page

Effective

Good

Updated 2 August 2024

The provider had not always considered or documented people’s capacity to consent in line with the Mental Capacity Act 2005. People were not always involved in planning and reviewing their care.

This service scored 67 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

Assessing needs

Score: 2

People's needs were assessed; however, these assessments lacked detail. People’s health conditions and the impact of these had not been fully considered and there was a lack of personalisation and detail about what was important to people and how they would like their care and support to be delivered. People's environment had not been adequately assessed by the provider. For example, where people were living with dementia, the provider had not considered how to make the environment more easy to navigate or interesting to interact with.

Staff and managers told us people’s care records were reviewed to ensure they remained an accurate reflection of people’s needs. However, we found significant inconsistencies across people’s care documentation. The management team told us they were in the process of implementing a new electronic care planning system and all information would be reviewed and checked prior to the transfer to electronic care planning.

The provider's processes for assessing and reviewing people's care and support needs were not robust. People's care plans contained an initial assessment of their needs which provided an overview of their support needs. However, this information did not contain all relevant information. People's assessments did not include sufficient detail about their individual care needs or preferences.

Delivering evidence-based care and treatment

Score: 3

We did not look at Delivering evidence-based care and treatment during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

How staff, teams and services work together

Score: 3

We did not look at How staff, teams and services work together during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

Supporting people to live healthier lives

Score: 3

We did not look at Supporting people to live healthier lives during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

Monitoring and improving outcomes

Score: 3

We did not look at Monitoring and improving outcomes during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

People’s consent to care and treatment had not always been documented in their care plans. This meant it was not clear how they had been involved in making decisions about how they wanted their care to be provided. Where consent had been documented, the process had not been completed correctly to evidence people’s involvement and control of their own care. People’s mental capacity assessments were poorly completed and not always up to date. This meant staff may not have accurate information about what decisions people were able to make for themselves and where they required support. Despite these concerns, we observed staff offering people choices and responding appropriately to people’s requests and decisions.

Staff we spoke with were able to tell us how they offered people choices in their daily care and demonstrated an understanding of people’s right to make their own decisions. The management team told us they were aware of concerns with the quality and accuracy of people’s mental capacity assessments and planned to update these assessments with people and their relatives as part of their transfer to electronic care planning. However, at the time of the assessment, this had not yet been implemented. The operations director told us they had prioritised reviewing and resubmitting all relevant Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) applications to ensure there was clear, up to date information relating to how and why people may need to be deprived of their liberty in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The provider's processes for assessing and documenting people's consent to care were not effective. Information was out of date and inaccurate. For example, for 1 person, all of their mental capacity assessments were dated August 2022 and they had not been reviewed or updated. Information within the assessments referred to the person still living at their previous home and made reference to them being cared for in bed when they were in fact mobile and we observed them walking around on the day of the assessment. These significant inaccuracies had not been addressed prior to our assessment.