Updated 28 February 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:
This inspection took place on 28 January and 29 January 2019 and was unannounced. The team on the first day of the inspection consisted of two inspectors and an expert by experience. An expert by experice is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service, on this occasion their expertise was in dementia care. A Specialist Professional Advisor (SPA) also supported this inspection. The SPA had specialist knowledge of caring for the elderly, including dementia care. The second day of the inspection was completed by one inspector and an inspection manager.
Service and service type:
Braintree Nursing Home is a ‘care home’. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care as single package under one contractual agreement. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.
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.
What we did:
Before the inspection we reviewed information available to us about this service. The provider had completed a Provider Information Return (PIR). This is a document that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We looked at the information provided in the PIR and used this to help inform our inspection. We contacted the Mid Essex Clinical Commissioning Group to obtain their feedback on how well the service was meeting the needs of people funded to receive nursing care. We also looked at previous inspection reports, details of safeguarding events and statutory notifications sent by the provider. A notification is information about important events which the provider is required to tell us by law, like a death or a serious injury.
We spoke with 10 people who were able to express their views, but not everyone chose to or were able to communicate effectively or articulately with us. Therefore we used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI) which is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us.
We spoke with 10 people’s relatives, the registered manager and provider. We also spoke with the deputy manager, trainer, care practitioner, three nurses and four support workers. We looked at six people's care records, and recruitment records for three staff. Other records reviewed, included medicines management, complaints, staff training, and systems for monitoring the quality of the service.