29 July 2019
During a routine inspection
St Elmo Care Home is a residential care home providing personal care to up to 23 people who may also be living with dementia. When we inspected there were 19 people living at the home.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
People felt safe living at St Elmo Care Home and they were very much at the heart of the service. We received consistently positive feedback from people, their relatives and health care professionals about the care.
Relevant recruitment checks were conducted before staff started working at the service to make sure they were of good character and had the necessary skills. However, there were a couple of unexplained gaps in staff’s employment history.
Medicines administration records (MAR) generally confirmed people had received their medicines as prescribed. Records relating to the application of topical creams were not always completed fully and would benefit from containing additional information to support staff in understanding where and how much cream should be applied.
Risks to people and environmental risks has been assessed and planned for. Work was underway to improve the systems in place to assess and identify risks relating to the management of legionella within the service.
Staff working at St Elmo Care Home understood people’s needs and supported people in a personalised way. Care was provided respectfully and sensitively, considering people’s different needs.
Staff had received training in safeguarding adults and knew how to identify, prevent and report abuse. There were enough staff to keep people safe.
Staff received frequent support and one to one sessions or supervision to discuss areas of development. They completed training and felt it supported them in their job role.
Staff had developed positive and caring relationships with people and their families. Staff were highly motivated and demonstrated a commitment to providing the best quality care to people in a compassionate way. People’s privacy and dignity was always maintained.
People received high quality end of life care by a team of staff that were passionate about providing quality care during people’s final days.
Regular audits of the service were carried out to assess and monitor the quality of the service. There were appropriate management arrangements in place and relatives were very positive about the management in the home.
People were supported with their nutritional needs when required. People received varied meals including a choice of fresh food and drinks. Staff were aware of people’s likes and dislikes
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.
St Elmo Care Home met the characteristics of Good in some areas and of Requires Improvement in one area. Overall, we have rated the service as Good.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection
The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 18 January 2017).
Why we inspected
This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating.
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.