We did not speak directly to people using the service in assessing the outcomes. We interviewed the manager, viewed the communal areas and some private areas of the home and asked to see staffing rosters.Our visit to the home had been carried out in conjunction with a visit by an officer of the East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) Safeguarding Adults' Team. We conducted information gathering in respect of a safeguarding allegation made by an anonymous caller to the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The caller also made a complaint, which had been passed to Care Tech, the registered company responsible for Franklin Homes Ltd (registered provider of The Mews). Care Tech company senior managers had been asked to investigate the complaint and report their findings to CQC.
Other visits that had taken place and information that had been received from organisations working jointly since the site visit for the purpose of ensuring peoples' safety within the home has been included in this report as it is relevant to the overall outcomes for people. These organisations included ERYC Adult Services and Safeguarding Adults' Team, East Riding of Yorkshire Primary Care Trust (ER PCT) and NHS Humber Foundation Trust (NHSHFT) which either funded or provided services to the people living at The Mews. The overall consensus of officers of these organisations was that the service at The Mews appeared to be 'failing'.
Information, which had been gathered between the dates of 29 June 2011 and 17 July 2011 by these organisations and shared in meetings included concerns about peoples' individual and personalised care needs being met, staffing levels and competence, deployment and direction of staff, medication errors, the poor state of the environment, handling and reporting of safeguarding and other incidents, and physical handling of people during incidents.
There was a mixture of longer term, newly recruited and agency staff working in the home and they did not have the skills, training and experience to support people with very complex psychological and behavioural needs. There was no registered manager and the manager in post did not have the skills to manage the staff. There was no direction for the staff, staff appeared to be afraid of people living there and could not manage their complex behaviours.