Archived: Besford House

Updated 16 August 2016

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This inspection took place on 14 and 21 June 2016 and was unannounced. We visited the home on both days and we visited the central Liverpool Council office at Cunard Buildings in Liverpool on 21 June 2016 in order to see records relating to staff recruitment and training.

This inspection was conducted by one adult social care inspector.

We checked with the local authority and also looked at our own records to see if there was any information we should consider during this inspection and to see if other people had made comments to us, about the service.

We also looked at the local Healthwatch website to see if they had recorded any concerns about the home. Healthwatch is an independent consumer champion that gathers and represents the views of the public about health and social care services in England. We also looked at our own records, to see if the service had submitted statutory notifications.

We toured the home and visited all three of the bungalows. We observed the interactions between staff and the people living there and spoke with three people. We spoke with five staff including the service manager by telephone and the manager of the home, viewed three staff files and saw other records relating to the running of the home.

Updated 16 August 2016

This inspection took place on 14 and 21 June 2016 and was unannounced.

Besford House is located in the Belle Vale area of Liverpool. There are three bungalows on the site which provide accommodation for up to six people in each bungalow. One bungalow provides permanent accommodation, care and support for people with learning disabilities and the other two provide emergency and respite care. There is an additional bungalow on the site which houses the office, staff rooms and storage facilities. The site is large and spacious and the buildings are situated around a central garden area. Besford House is within easy reach of supermarkets and shops, leisure and public transport facilities.

The home is registered to provide accommodation and care for up to 18 adults between the ages of 18 to 66. One bungalow was dedicated to providing planned respite, one was for emergency respite or placements and the third bungalow was a permanent home to five people, all who had been there for some years.

The home required a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

At the time of our inspection, there was an interim manager in post as the previous registered manager had been absent from the service for several months. We were told by staff and senior managers that the home’s future was uncertain and that several options were being considered both for the service users, the site and the staff. There was ongoing consultation with users of the service, their relatives and staff. Because the home’s future was uncertain, there had been no appointment of a registered manager since the previous one had left.

Before our inspection, we looked at information the Care Quality Commission (CQC) had received about the service including notifications received from the manager. We checked that we had received these in a timely manner. We also looked at safeguarding referrals, complaints and any other information from members of the public. We had not received any information of concern about the home. We looked at the information contained on the Healthwatch Liverpool website. Healthwatch is an independent consumer champion that gathers and represents the views of the public about health and social care services in England.

We found that the home operated safely and that staff were able to tell us about safeguarding procedures. There were appropriate health and safety checks made in the home and staff were recruited with the relevant checks made prior to their employment.

The provider had complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards and its associated codes of practice in the delivery of care. We found that the staff had followed the requirements and principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA). Staff we spoke with had an understanding of what their role was and what their obligations where in order to maintain people’s rights.

The care records were person centered and we saw that staff treated people as individuals and respected their privacy, dignity, choice and need for confidentiality.

There was no registered manager in post and the interim manager was dealing with a difficult situation as the home was in a period of great change for everyone associated with it, which involved moving people living there to other accommodation and re-locating staff to other jobs.