Chamberlaine Court

People told us they felt safe living at Chamberlaine Court, and relatives spoke of good communication if their family member was unwell or involved in an accident or incident. Processes were in place to support safe and effective risk management and people had the equipment they needed to reduce risks and keep them safe. People benefited from living in a safe and clean environment and staff understood their role in mitigating risk and reporting their concerns. People and relatives described staff as being very busy; staff told us it could be challenging to meet people’s needs at busier times of the day. The registered manager reviewed the deployment of staff during our assessment. Some aspects of medicines management and staff practice needed to be improved to ensure people received their medicines as prescribed.

Care plans were developed from assessing, monitoring and reviewing people’s needs. People were offered enough to eat and drink to maintain their health and there were effective processes to ensure people’s dietary needs were known by all staff. People received care that supported them to remain healthy and monitored to ensure positive outcomes. Where there were restrictions in people’s care plans, their capacity to consent to those restrictions was assessed. However, improvements were required to ensure conditions on approved Deprivation of Liberty Safeguard (DoLS) application were met.

We assessed a total of 2 quality statements from this key question. Staff interactions with people were relaxed and caring. People described staff as being kind, friendly and respectful. People felt able to make choices about how they spent their day. However, staff were very busy and felt people would benefit from more choice and independence if they had more time to spend with people.

We assessed 3 quality statements from this key question. Staff recognised the importance of knowing people well, but felt they did not always have time to spend with people or to engage them in meaningful activity. People were happy their care reflected their needs, but processes were not always effective in capturing their views, or the views of their relatives. People were able to access other healthcare professionals when they needed to. The provider monitored people to ensure those less able to express pain or feeling unwell had timely access to other healthcare professionals.

Improvement had been made in the governance and management of the home since our last inspection. However, some audits needed to be more robust when checking the effectiveness of policies and procedures. Staff told us they enjoyed working at the home and felt well supported in their role. Staff spoke positively about the management team and recognised the contribution of the registered manager in providing direction and driving improvement in the service. There were procedures in place to support staff to speak up and promote equality and diversity.