Aden Court Care Home

Staffing levels were kept under review and a dependency tool was used to assess the numbers of staff needed. People, staff and relatives gave mixed feedback about whether there were enough staff available to meet people's needs in a timely way. We made a recommendation the provider continues to keep people's needs under review, along with the deployment of staff within the home, to ensure people's needs are attended to in a timely way. Recruitment was ongoing to ensure staffing levels were adequate, although checks had not always robustly been completed before staff started working at the service.

Staff did not always follow correct procedures to control the spread of infection with regard to their own symptoms of illness. The home was visibly clean and mostly free from odours. Where more through cleaning was needed, this was identified by the management team and scheduled.

People were mostly 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 were supported to make decisions, although at times, some people felt they did not have a choice about whether they came out of their room if they relied on staff to help them.

Care and support not always planned in a way that met people's needs. Care plans were not always person- centred and did not always guide staff on people's current care needs. People's preferences around end of life care were not recorded. Daily care records were not completed or sufficiently reviewed to show personal care was managed in line with people's needs and wishes.

Systems to assess, monitor and improve the service were in place but not always effective. Quality checks and audits did not always identify actions or timescales, or result in sufficient improvements where actions were identified. There were systems in place to gather feedback about the service. There was evidence of the service working in partnership with health and social care professionals.

The provider was responsive to the inspection findings and sent information to show they were taking action to address the areas of risk identified at the inspection.

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