7 February 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Kent House is a residential care home providing personal care to 17 older people or people living with dementia at the time of the inspection. The service can support up to 25 people. Accommodation is arranged over three floors and a lift is available to assist people to get to the upper floors.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
People told us they were happy and felt safe living at Kent House. One relative told us, “I can’t fault the care”. We found improvements had been made and people were no longer at risk of harm.
The registered manager had left the service in September 2022 and the provider was looking to appoint a replacement. No applications from appointable candidates had been received and the provider continued to seek a new manager. In the interim they had arranged for the service to been led by an experienced manager. The manager had worked with the staff team to make improvements at the service.
People were at the centre of everything that happened at the service and staff now worked as a team to ensure people received a good standard of care. Staff felt supported and appreciated.
There were enough staff with the required skills and experience to meet people’s needs. People told us staff were “helpful” and “They help me”. Relatives told us staff were, “nice and good and caring”, “friendly and responsive” and “They really do care”. They also told us staff were gentle when they supported people.
People’s needs had been assessed with them before they moved into the service. Risks to people had been assessed and care had been planned with them to keep them as safe as possible. People’s medicines were managed safely and people received the medicines and health care they needed to stay well. Staff knew how to identify safeguarding concerns and were confident to raise these with the provider and outside organisations.
People told us they enjoyed the food at the service. Meals were prepared to meet people’s needs and preferences.
Regular checks and audits had been completed and any shortfalls identified. Action had been taken to address these. When things had gone wrong the provider learnt lessons and took action to prevent them from happening again. People and their relatives had received an apology.
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. People received visitors when they wanted to and went out with friends, family and staff.
The building had been adapted to meet people’s needs. It was clean and staff followed best practice guidance to protect people from the risk of the spread of infection.
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 15 December 2022). We applied a condition to the provider’s registration requiring them to send us a monthly report on the actions they had taken to improve the quality of the service. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.
Why we inspected
This inspection was carried out to follow up on action we told the provider to take at the last inspection. We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the Safe key question. We look at this in all care home inspections even if no concerns or risks have been identified. This is to provide assurance that the service can respond to COVID-19 and other infection outbreaks effectively.
We undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe, effective 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 changed from requires improvement to good based on the findings of this inspection.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Kent House Residential Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.