10 May 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Southernwood House is a residential care home providing personal care to up to 28 people. It is in an adapted building. The service provides support to adults of all ages, some of whom may be living with a physical disability or dementia. At the time of our inspection there were 19 people using the service.
Southernwood House also provides care to people in their own home. We did not review this part of the care provided as only two people were using the service at the time of the inspection and their care was in the process of being transferred to a new service provider.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Medicines were not always safely managed and audits in place to monitor the safety of medicines were not effective in keeping people safe.
Other audits in the home identified areas for improvement and the manager took action to make changes and enhance the quality of care provided. The manager gathered the views of people using the service and staff to identify areas for improvement.
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.
There were enough staff in place to meet people’s needs and staff had received the training needed to provide safe care. Staff had been safely recruited to ensure they were safe to work with people living at the home.
Risks to people receiving care had been identified and care was planned to keep people safe. The home was clean, and staff wore PPE correctly to reduce the risk of infection.
Where concerns were raised the manager worked with the local authority and healthcare professionals to ensure people were safe and well.
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 13 August 2022).
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 the provider remained in breach of regulations.
We made a recommendation at the last inspection regarding audits. We found medicines audits were still ineffective at supporting the safe management of medicines.
The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 13 August 2022). The service remains rated requires improvement. This service has been rated requires improvement for the last three consecutive inspections.
Why we inspected
We received concerns in relation to risk management, medicines management and infection control. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.
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 remained requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection.
We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the safe and well-led sections of this full report.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Southernwood House on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement
We have identified breaches in relation to the safe management of medicines and the auditing of medicines which had not picked up ongoing and recurrent issues at this inspection.
Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.
Follow up
We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.