Archived: Cheriton Care Home

Updated 4 April 2019

The inspection:

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team:

The inspection was carried out by an inspector and an expert by experience on the first day. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service. Their area of expertise was care of older people and dementia care. The second day of the inspection was carried out by one inspector.

Service and service type:

Cheriton Care Home is a care home. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

The service is required to have a registered manager. The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection:

The inspection was unannounced. Inspection site visit activity started on 28 February 2019 and ended on 1 March 2019.

What we did:

• We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return. This is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.

• We reviewed notifications and any other information we had received since the last inspection. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to send us by law.

• We contacted social care professionals, to seek their views about people’s care.

• We spoke with the registered manager, the provider and four staff members in a range of roles.

• We spoke with nine people who live at the home and two relatives. We also took into account feedback we received from a relative before the inspection.

• We spoke with a visiting healthcare professional who regularly sees people at the home.

• We checked some of the required records. These included four people’s care plans, three people’s medicines records, three staff recruitment files and four staff training and development records. Other records included those which related to safety of the premises, a sample of policies and procedures, auditing reports and complaints.

• We observed mealtimes.

• We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us.

• We contacted the fire authority and the local authority Deprivation of Liberty Safeguarding team, after the inspection.

Updated 4 April 2019

About the service: Cheriton Care Home is a residential care home registered to provide care for up to 27 people. It was providing personal care to 20 people aged 65 and over at the time of the inspection. Some people had dementia.

People’s experience of using this service:

• People spoke positively about their care and the staff who supported them. Some people told us they had found it difficult to communicate with staff whose first language was not English.

• People received the healthcare support they needed. A healthcare professional told us the service was “very friendly” and they had no concerns about people’s care.

• People’s needs were recorded in care plans and kept under review. There was information to support people in the way they preferred and to help ensure it was person-centred.

• People enjoyed the food.

• Staff received the training and support they needed to meet care needs and to develop as professional workers.

• There were some areas where care could be improved. We have made recommendations about fire safety, recruitment practice, updating the complaints procedure and the management of diabetes. Further recommendations have been made about the assessment of staff performance before they are confirmed in post, making information widely accessible to people and seeking guidance from the Health and Safety Executive. Another recommendation has been made regarding suitability of the environment for people with dementia.

• We found governance of the service was not effective in identifying areas of practice where the home was not meeting the regulations or where it could improve delivery of care. This included meeting regulatory requirements to notify us of important events and to inform the local authority about allegations of abuse. Audits and checks of medicines practice had not identified a morphine-based medicine was not logged in the appropriate record. Infection control audits had not picked up the issues we observed. A number of health and safety risks had also not been identified. These all had the potential to place people at risk from harm.

Rating at last inspection: The service was rated ‘Good’ at the last inspection on 24 and 26 November 2015. We published our report on 15 January 2016.

Why we inspected: This inspection was part of our scheduled plan of visiting services to check the safety and quality of care people received.

Enforcement: We found areas of practice where the provider was not meeting the regulations. These were in relation to governance of the service, demonstrating lawful deprivation of people’s liberty, notification of incidents, management of medicines and safeguarding people from abuse.

Please see the ‘action we have told the provider to take’ section towards the end of the report.

Follow up: We will ask the provider to submit an action plan which outlines what they will do to improve the service and by when. We will continue to monitor the service to ensure that people receive safe, compassionate, high quality care. Inspections will be carried out to enable us to have an overview of the service, we will use information we receive to inform future inspections.

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