- Care home
St Catherines Care Home
Report from 9 September 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of assessment: 21 October to 22 November 2024
St Catherines is a care home providing accommodation and nursing care to older people, some of whom were living with dementia. This was an unannounced, responsive assessment, prompted by emerging risk. At the time of our assessment 34 people were using the service. CQC regulates both the premises, and the care provided, and both were looked at during this assessment. The provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations. At the time of our assessment, St Catherines did not have a registered manager in place. During the assessment, we identified 5 breaches of Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities). These included safe care and treatment, safeguarding service users from abuse and improper treatment, meeting nutritional and hydration needs, staffing and governance. The previous rating for this service was requires improvement overall and inadequate in well led published on 23 September 2022. During the previous report the service was in breach of regulations 12 Safe Care and Treatment, 17 Governance,18 Staffing and 19 Fitness of People Employed, relating to the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. We identified the service continued to be unsafe, poorly governed and understaffed. New concerns were raised at this assessment about protecting people from harm and preventing risk of dehydration.
People's experience of this service
People living at St Catherines were not always protected from abuse. Provider oversight, knowledge and the reporting of safeguarding incidents was ineffective. Safeguarding incidents and concerns had gone unreported with actions taken did not enable a full and transparent investigation into such incidents. While people felt safe; some relatives agreed while others felt their family members were at risk at harm and recommendations from safeguarding investigations had not been implemented.
Medicines management was not safe with the result many people had not received prescribed medicines which placed them at risk. Stocks of medicines were not ordered in a timely manner and there was no effective oversight to remedy repeated omissions over several months.
Staffing levels were not sufficient to meet the needs of people. Staff were not able to effectively supervise people given the high dependency needs of people and as a result their work had become task orientated with little time to interact with people in a meaningful way. People had unwitnessed falls which suggested staff resources were not sufficient to supervise them and keep them safe.