Woodfalls Care Home

Updated 6 January 2022

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection team consisted of two inspectors.

Service and service type

Woodfalls Care Home is a ‘care home’. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care as single package under one contractual agreement. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection

This inspection was unannounced.

What we did before the inspection

Before the inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service and the service provider. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return. This is information providers are required to send us with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. We looked at the notifications we had received for this service. Notifications are information about important events the service is required to send us by law. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with six people to gather their views about the care they received.

We looked at five people’s care records. We checked recruitment, training and supervision records for staff and looked at a range of records about how the service was managed. We also spoke with the registered manager and four staff.

After the inspection

We spoke with a further three care staff by phone. We received feedback from three relatives and two health professionals by email.

Updated 6 January 2022

About the service

Woodfalls Care Home is a care home providing accommodation and personal care for up to 24 people aged 65 and over. At the time of the inspection 22 people were living in the service.

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

We made a recommendation that the provider reviews the medicines management practice, to ensure their procedures are followed consistently.

People told us they were supported to take the medicines they were prescribed on time. People said they could get additional support if needed, for example additional pain relief. Staff had kept clear records of the support they provided for people to take tablet and liquid medicines. However, the records for people prescribed emollient creams were inconsistent, with some days when there was no record of people being supported to use the cream.

The home had good infection prevention and control procedures in place. Procedures had been reviewed and updated to reflect the COVID-19 pandemic. Systems were in place to prevent visitors catching and spreading infections.

There were enough staff to meet people’s needs. The registered manager had strengthened the home's staffing contingency measures following an emergency situation. This meant there were more bank staff to call on to cover unexpected staff absence if needed.

The registered manager had taken action to keep people safe and manage the risks they faced. Staff had a good understanding of the action they needed to take to keep people safe.

Staff demonstrated a good understanding of people’s individual needs and a commitment to provide person-centred care.

The registered manager worked well with people to meet their needs. They had developed good relationships with health and social care professionals.

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

The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 19 October 2019) and there were breaches of regulations. Targeted inspections were completed in January and October 2020, following which we served warning notices due to continued breaches of regulations. A further targeted inspection was completed in November 2020, when we found the provider had complied with the warning notices.

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to staffing. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.

The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good. This is based on the findings at this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Woodfalls Care Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.