Buckingham Lodge Care Home

Buckingham lodge is a residential care home providing personal and nursing care to up to 73 people. The property had a ground middle and top floor and can accommodate people who need residential accommodation, nursing or those living with dementia. At the time of our inspection there were 52 people using the service.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

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. We did find however one person’s needs could not continue to be met safely in line with their preferences and felt the service could have established this earlier and clarified the risks.

The service had undergone a management of change with new providers taking over the running and management of the home in 2021. There has been an established registered manager who has now been in post for a year and has managed to significantly reduce agency staff and achieve full recruitment. This has created a more stable service which was more responsive to people's needs. Although we found the provider had the numbers of staff, they said they needed, we observed people were not always being supported by staff in line with their needs. The manager told us no one had been identified as requiring one to one support. They stated staff checked on people at regular intervals across the day to help promote their safety.

The manager and deputy manager had tried to impress on each member of staff about the importance of person-centred care and although the culture was changing it was not firmly embedded. Though our observation we found some staffs practice was task focused

Activity staff were working hard but had limited support from care staff to ensure regular interactions and meaningful activity was part of everyday life for people.

People told us staff were kind and caring and upheld their dignity. The environment was safe, clean and well maintained. Whilst the service offered lots of space and different areas for people to use, we did not observe staff encouraging people making use of the facilities other than accessing the dining room and lounge area.

Medicines were managed safely but we have made a number of recommendations.

Improvement in record keeping would help to evidence how staff are delivering care in line with people’s needs.

Governance and oversight were strong, and engagement was improving with opportunities for people, staff and relatives to feedback their experiences to help improve the care provided.

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

This service was registered with us on 25 February 2021 and this is the first inspection.

The last rating for the service under the previous provider was requires improvement, published on 07 April 2020.

Why we inspected

We inspected this service to give it a rating as a first inspection under a new provider.

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.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.