The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has downgraded the rating of King Street - Care Home Physical Disabilities in Sileby, Leicestershire from good to inadequate and placed it into special measures to protect people following an inspection in October.
King Street – Care Home Physical Disabilities, run by Leonard Cheshire Disabilities, is a care home for people requiring nursing or personal care with physical disabilities, learning disabilities and conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease.
CQC carried out the inspection due to concerns it received about safe care and treatment and a lack of effective management at the home. The inspection was carried out in line with CQC’s ‘Right care, right culture, right support’ guidance, which assesses whether a service guarantees autistic people and people with a learning disability the respect, equality, dignity, choice, independence and access to local communities that most people take for granted.
Inspectors found that care had deteriorated and the service was now in breach of six regulations in relation to safe care and treatment, medicine management, safe and effective staffing, person-centred care, dignity and respect and good management.
CQC has rated King Street – Care Home Physical Disabilities as inadequate for being safe, caring and well-led, down from good. The rating for how responsive the service is has dropped from outstanding to requires improvement, while effective has gone from good to requires improvement.
CQC has 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.
CQC issued the service with a warning notice to focus their attention on making rapid and widespread improvements where the most serious concerns were found – in how they provide safe care and treatment, and how the service is being managed. The warning notice was served for failure to implement risk management oversight and good management systems.
Greg Rielly, CQC’s deputy director of adult social care for the East Midlands, said:
“When we inspected King Street Care Home, we found that leaders failed to ensure that the care delivered was safe, person-centred and well-coordinated, or aligned with the principles of Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, putting people at risk of harm.
“While it appeared that staff knew people well, they lacked the specific skills to communicate with people in their preferred way and support them effectively when they became distressed.
“Our inspectors found leaders didn’t manage staff in a way that allowed them to respond to people’s needs in a timely manner – in one case, a person waited over 20 minutes following their request for support – which impacted people’s dignity. We also noted that staff didn’t always respect people's dignity. One person wasn’t mobilised correctly, which meant they were left in a hoist, causing them unnecessary discomfort and compromising their dignity.
“We also witnessed people who were unable to communicate or move independently being left in unsafe environments due to insufficient staffing levels. This included times when another person was in visible distress and behaving in a way that could pose a risk to others.
“We have told leaders where we expect to see rapid, and widespread improvements. We will return to check on their progress and won’t hesitate to use our regulatory powers further if people still aren’t receiving the care they have a right to expect.”
Inspectors found:
- Leaders didn’t always routinely monitor people’s care and treatment to continuously improve it or ensure that outcomes were positive and consistent.
- Staff didn’t always support people to live healthier lives or in a way which enabled them to maximise their independence, choice and control.
- Leaders lacked oversight of people’s assessed needs, which meant care wasn’t delivered safely or effectively putting people at risk of harm.
- Some staff members weren’t aware of people’s essential protocols when managing their health needs, placing them at significant risk of harm if an emergency occurred.
- Staff didn’t always follow safeguarding processes and incidents weren’t managed or reported to reduce further risks of harm.
- The home didn’t ensure people’s care plans and risk assessments reflected their current medicine needs and leaders didn’t ensure systems were in place to safely give and store medicines, putting people at risk.
- Leaders didn’t ensure continuity of care between different services or work well with people and external partners to establish and maintain safe systems of care.