Spencefield Grange

Updated 1 May 2024

Spencefield Grange is a care home providing the regulated activity of personal care, including those living with dementia. We carried out this assessment due to concerns we received about keeping people safe and the management of the service. The inspection team included 3 inspectors, 1 specialist advisor and an expert by experience. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service. We received feedback from the local authority quality monitoring team. During the assessment process we spoke with 6 people and 2 relatives. We observed how people are being cared for and supported. We looked at 9 quality statements, from the safe and well led key questions and found significant areas of concern across all. We found breaches of the legal regulations in relation to safeguarding, safe care and treatment, staffing, safe management of medicines and governance. Staff did not consistently protect people from abuse and improper treatment. Staff did not always assess risks to people's health and safety or mitigate them where identified. People's medicines were not safely managed. People did not always have care plans to guide safe practice. Governance systems and audits were not effective in identifying or addressing areas for improvement.

Updated 1 May 2024

People and their relatives gave mixed feedback about their care and support provided by the management team and staff at Spencefield Grange. People said the staff were kind and caring. However, people told us staff were limited on time to support people with their needs. People told us “They do their best, but they are always busy” and a relative told us “I saw a gentleman asking for help to go to the toilet they kept putting him off because there was no staff, it took them half an hour to take him”. Some concerns were raised by relatives, about the lack of communication from the management team regarding their loved ones when an incident occurred. Comments included, ‘My relative had a fall on the 2 June they didn’t tell me. [person] had a mark on their head, I asked them how it happened, and they said [person] had a fall.” And "I spoke to the manager, seemed ok. I didn’t know the manager had changed. I spoke to the big person I didn’t know they were the manager". And “[Person] lost a lot of weight, three stone. They haven’t discussed it, they haven’t discussed anything really”.