The Care Quality Commission (CQC), has rated The Garth Care Home in Kington, Herefordshire as inadequate and placed it into special measures following an inspection in August and September.
The Garth Care Home with Nursing, run by a company called Wentworth Care Ltd, is a care home providing nursing and personal care to adults. There were 27 people living at the home at the time of the inspection.
CQC carried out the inspection in response to potential concerns raised by external organisations, which inspectors substantiated. This was the first inspection of the home since it has been run by Wentworth Care Ltd.
CQC identified four breaches of regulation related to person-centred care, consent, safe care and treatment, and good management. CQC told the home to submit an action plan showing what immediate and widespread action it is taking in response to these concerns.
CQC has rated how safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led the home is as inadequate.
CQC has also placed the service into special measures which involves close monitoring to ensure people are safe while they make improvements. Special measures also provides a structured timeframe so services understand when they need to make improvements by, and what action CQC will take if this doesn’t happen.
Amanda Lyndon, CQC deputy director of operations in the midlands, said:
“During our inspection of The Garth Care Home, we had multiple concerns about the care and treatment people were receiving. It was clear leaders needed to do more work to ensure people were receiving safe care that met their individual needs.
“People told us about mixed experiences of receiving care and support from the service. Some people said they were bored and fed up, but said staff were kind and tried their best. We saw some staff have positive interactions with people and engaged well, but others didn’t interact with people outside of personal care tasks.
“The home didn’t actively seek people’s views on the service to help identify improvements, and people couldn’t recall being asked for feedback on their care. Leaders didn’t ensure staff had the right skills and understanding to provide effective care.
“It was concerning to find leaders hadn’t identified areas of the home environment that needed improving to reduce the risks people faced. They hadn’t taken appropriate measures to reduce the risk of people falling from height, as a stairway in an area of the home near people’s rooms didn’t have suitable preventative measures to stop the risk of falling. Staff told inspectors that a previous resident had tried to climb over the stair gate in this area, putting them at risk of serious injury.
“We have told leaders at The Garth Care Home where urgent improvements are needed. We will continue to monitor the service closely to ensure people are kept safe while this happens.”
Inspectors found:
- Staff didn’t provide person-centred care or spend enough time with people outside of care tasks to understand them as individuals. They didn’t involve people in planning or reviewing their care and support, and as a result care plans lacked information on people’s personal preferences.
- The home’s layout limited opportunities for interactions and activities, and inspectors found this didn’t meet expected standards.
- Leaders didn’t manage incidents safely and missed opportunities to learn from incidents and identify improvements.
- Leaders didn’t have appropriate systems and processes in place to monitor the quality of care the home delivered.
- Staff needed to record information in records more accurately to help leaders review and monitor the frequency of accidents and how they could reduce reoccurrence.
- The home didn’t work in partnership with people and their healthcare partners to understand how it could keep them safe or help improve their lives.
- The home didn’t have processes in place to administer medicines safely. Inspectors found a person’s medicines on the floor of their room, and they had previously been identified as needing support to take this.