Ashton Lodge Nursing Home

Updated 30 April 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 the coronavirus pandemic we are looking at the preparedness of care homes in relation to infection prevention and control. This was a targeted inspection looking at the infection control and prevention measures the provider has in place.

This inspection took place on 13 April 2021 and was announced.

Updated 30 April 2021

About the service: Ashton Lodge Nursing Home (Ashton Lodge) is a residential care home providing personal and nursing care for up to 100 people. The service provides respite and long-term care for older people who may be physically or mentally frail or living with dementia. At the time of our inspection, 87 people were living at the service.

People’s experience of using this service:

People gave positive feedback about staff, the food and the care they received. They also told us they felt safe. However, we observed some less than respectful practices by some individual staff, staff deployment was not suitably organised and infection control procedures were not always followed by staff.

We also found that where restrictions had been placed on some people these were not supported by staff following legal requirements. We have made a recommendation to the registered provider in this respect.

People could decide how they spent their time and activities were on offer, however we did receive some mixed feedback about social stimulation within the service. The registered provider provided us with evidence that they were continually working to improve this. People were invited to give their feedback on the quality of care and any comments were listened to.

People told us the registered manager was approachable and staff felt supported and thought improvements had started to be made. We found some positive improvements since our last inspection but there was further work to be done to embed and sustain those improvements.

At this inspection, we made six recommendations to the registered provider.

Rating at last inspection: We last inspected Ashton Lodge on 16 February 2018 where we rated the service at Requires Improvement. The report was published on 13 April 2018.

Why we inspected: We carried out this scheduled comprehensive inspection to see if the registered provider had taken the necessary action to address the shortfalls identified at our last inspection.

Follow up: We will continue to monitor this service and will next inspect it in line with our published inspection process and methodology.

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