Grace House Care Home Limited

During this visit, we found breaches of regulation in governance processes and safe care and treatment.

Governance processes needed to improve to ensure the registered manager identified any shortfalls in the service. This included individual audits, accidents and incident records and medicines administration. Effective governance processes would also enable them to check staff were meeting expected standards and providing person-centred care to people consistently.

Information about people, particularly in relation to their individual risks, needed strengthening to ensure staff had sufficient guidance in place to follow. There was also a need to improve monitoring of people’s health, so it was consistent.

The registered manager could not be assured the environment in which people lived was free from the risk of infection or that it was consistently safe. We found areas throughout the building which could not be cleaned properly, causing a risk to people of avoidable infections, this included poor maintenance as well as trip hazards.

Although staffing levels were as planned by the service, people said they had to wait to go to bed and records indicated people also waited in the morning at times to be supported to get up.

Staff were not recruited through robust processes, and they were not being given the opportunity to meet with their line manager on a regular basis to discuss their role.

Medicines practices required improvement, especially in relation to the storage of medicines as we found items were being stored at temperatures above the manufacturers’ recommendations. This meant there was a risk they would not be effective.

Further work was needed to ensure activities were person-centred and based on people’s likes, preferences and choices.

Staff however liked working at the service and felt valued and supported by management. They told us the training they received was good and that they felt they knew people.

The registered manager was very responsive to our feedback during and after the assessment and immediately started to act on the areas we had identified. They continued to communicate with us following the visit and updating us on progress made.