Orchard Manor Care Home

Updated 24 February 2021

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

As part of CQC’s response to care homes with outbreaks of coronavirus, we are conducting reviews to ensure that the Infection Prevention and Control practice was safe and the service was compliant with IPC measures. This was a targeted inspection looking at the IPC practices the provider has in place.

This inspection took place on 28 January 2021 and was announced.

Updated 24 February 2021

About the service

Orchard Manor is a residential care home providing personal and nursing care to 89 people aged 65 and over at the time of the inspection. The service can support up to 93 people. It accommodates all people across two separate wings, each of which has separate adapted facilities.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

We have made a recommendation. It is a legal requirement that we are notified of certain events with the service. Due to a misunderstanding, the deaths of people and altercations between people who used the service involving physical assault had not always been reported to us.

Staff were clear about the types of abuse that could occur and how to raise these. The registered provider followed local procedures reporting ‘low level’ incidents to the local authority each month.

People told us that they felt safe with the staff team and had no concerns about living within Orchard Manor. They told us that the staff team were “Very kind” and that they had been given “A new lease of life” since coming to live there. They commented that the staff team made sure that their living environment was clean and that they always received medication on time and it was “never missed”.

Appropriate numbers of staff were available to meet the needs of people. Some people required one to one support at different times of the day and night. While staff were available to those requiring one to one support; we observed one member of staff leaving the person’s room for brief periods on two occasions. We raised this with the registered manager who dealt with the situation and confirmed it was usual practice for staff to seek other staff to cover their absence.

The environment was well maintained, clean and hygienic. We raised issues with the registered manager in respect of security of the building at night and access to areas that could present a risk to people. These were addressed during our visit.

Medication was appropriately stored, recorded, audited and medication was administered in a person- centred way. The process for recruiting new staff was robust.

The views of people who used the service and their families were sought in order to assess and monitor the quality of the service.

The service worked effectively with other agencies

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was Good (published 30 June 2018).

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to the management of medication, staffing levels, arrangements for the safe transferring of people and staff practice. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the Key Questions of Safe and Well-led only.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other Key Questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those Key Questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.

We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from this concern. Please see the safe and well-led sections of this report.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk