Beechdene Care Home

Updated 9 February 2024

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 Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection was completed by 2 inspectors.

Service and service type

Beechdene Care Home is a ‘care home’. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing and/or personal care as a single package under one contractual agreement dependent on their registration with us. Beechdene Care Home is a care home without nursing care. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations. At the time of our inspection there was not a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

This inspection was unannounced.

What we did before the inspection

The provider was not asked to complete a Provider Information Return (PIR) prior to this inspection. A PIR is information providers send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.

We reviewed information we had received in our ‘share your experience’ forms. These are online records, which members of the public can share their experiences of using, working at or visiting the care home. We contacted external stakeholders (like the local authority) to gather their feedback on the service.

We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with 6 people who used the service and 2 relatives. We spoke with a visiting health professional. We also spoke to 5 members of staff, including the manager and nominated individual. The nominated individual is responsible for supervising the management of the service on behalf of the provider.

We reviewed a range of records. This included the relevant parts of 4 people's care and medication records. We looked at 3 staff files in relation to the safety of recruitment. A variety of records relating to the management of the service, including policies, training records and procedures were also reviewed.

Updated 9 February 2024

About the service

Beechdene Care Home is a residential care home. It provides support for up to 14 people. At the time of the inspection, there were 14 people using the service. The service supported people with learning disabilities.

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

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

Right Support: People were not provided with a safe, clean, or well-maintained environment. Medicines were not always supported in a safe way. Health action plan documentation was not in place to ensure people received suitable health support.

Right Care: Staff were kind to people. However, the environment did not always ensure people were provided with privacy. Staff understood how to protect people from potential abuse, but we saw management had not always referred concerns of abuse to the local authority to investigate. Staff were generally well trained, but had not received training on how to administer a person’s urgent ‘as needed’ medicine for their health condition.

Right Culture: The provider was intending to close the home within a few months. We saw multiple aspects of the home were not well maintained. We were not assured effective leadership was in place to ensure people were supported safely. Audits were not always in place. Those audits that were in place were not always effective. This meant we were not assured people were supported by the management team in the best way.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for the service under the previous provider was good, (published on 27 July 2019). This service was registered with us on 15 February 2023 and this is the first inspection under the current provider.

Why we inspected

The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about environmental safety and staffing levels at the care home. These concerns were received from external stakeholders and members of the public. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks. We initially decided to inspect just the key questions of safe and well led. However, due to concerns seen during the inspection, we assessed all areas at the service.

You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.

Enforcement and Recommendations

We have identified breaches in relation to safety, safeguarding people safe from abuse, and the governance of the care home. Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.

Follow up

We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.

The overall rating for this service is ‘Inadequate’ and the service is therefore in ‘special measures’. This means we will keep the service under review and, if we do not propose to cancel the provider’s registration, we will re-inspect within 6 months to check for significant improvements.

If the provider has not made enough improvement within this timeframe and there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall rating, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures. This will mean we will begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will usually lead to cancellation of their registration or to varying the conditions the registration.

For adult social care services, the maximum time for being in special measures will usually be no more than 12 months. If the service has demonstrated improvements when we inspect it and it is no longer rated as inadequate for any of the five key questions it will no longer be in special measures.