9 January 2024
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Pen House is a residential care home providing personal and nursing care to up to 26 people. The service provides support to older people some of who were living with dementia. At the time of our inspection there were 16 people using the service.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Systems were not ensuring medicines administration records were completed accurately; however, medicines had been administered as prescribed. People were kept safe as staff understood how to recognise and report any concerns about potential abuse and could manage known risks to people’s safety. There were enough staff to support people safely, and when incidents occurred there were systems in place to learn from these and prevent things from happening again. The home was kept clean, and staff understood how to protect people from the risk of cross infection.
People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.
Systems were in place to check on the care people had received and ensure accurate care records were in place. There were opportunities for feedback about the service to be sought and this was used to support learning and development of the service. There were other professionals involved in people’s care and people received person centred support. The registered manager was approachable and responsive to any concerns raised.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection and update
The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 2 October 2023). The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.
Why we inspected
The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about risk management and medicines. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks.
This inspection also followed up on action we told the provider to take at the last inspection.
We carried out an unannounced comprehensive inspection of this service on 25 July 2023. A breach of legal requirements was found. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve governance.
We undertook this focused inspection to check they had followed their action plan and to confirm they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions Safe and Well-led which contain those requirements.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good based on the findings of this inspection.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Penn House Residential Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.