10 October 2022
During an inspection looking at part of the service
About the service
Carter House is a residential care home providing personal care and support to older people. At the time of our inspection 42 people were living at the care home. Approximately a third of the people who resided there were living with dementia. The premises is divided into three separate units/floors, each of which has their own adapted facilities.
People’s experience of using this service
People living in Carter House and staff working there told us the service had improved in the last 12 months since the last CQC inspection and said the care home was now a safe, well-managed service.
Medicines were now well-organised and staff helped people take their prescribed medicines in a safe way. The service has ensured there are always sufficient numbers of suitably trained staff to support people to stay safe and meet their needs and wishes.
Staffs suitability and fitness to work in an adult social care setting have been properly assessed.
People were protected against the risk of avoidable harm and abuse. The risks people might face were assessed and their safety monitored and managed so they were supported to stay safe. This included routinely monitoring the care homes fire safety arrangements to ensure they continued to be fit for purpose.
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.
The environment was clean and staff followed current best practice guidelines regarding the prevention and control of infection (IPC), including those associated with COVID-19.
The new manager and her deputy manager were both clear about their roles and responsibilities. They understood regulatory requirements and how to ensure people received high-quality, person-centred, safe care. This was achieved by routinely monitoring and analysing the safety and quality of the care people received.
The management team also recognised the importance of learning lessons when things went wrong and was keen to continuously improve the service.
The managers promoted an open and inclusive culture and worked in close partnership with other health and social care professionals and agencies to plan and deliver positive outcomes for people.
People living at the care home and staff working there were complimentary about the way the management team ran the service, and how approachable they all were. In addition, staff told us they received all the support they needed from their managers and felt staff morale had significantly improved in the last 12 months.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at the last inspection
The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 2 November 2021).
Why we inspected
We carried out an unannounced focused inspection of this service in October 2021 and breaches of legal requirements were found. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show us what they would do and by when to improve the safe management of medicines and the effectiveness of how they operated their governance systems.
We undertook this focused inspection to check they had followed their action plan and to confirm they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions Safe and Well-led which contain those requirements.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations. The overall rating for the service has therefore changed from requires improvement to good.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Carter House 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.