Archived: Rosswood Gardens

Updated 5 February 2015

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked 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 October 2014 and was unannounced.

The inspection team included an inspector and an expert by experience. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of services.

Before the inspection we asked the provider to complete a Provider Information Return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We looked at all the notifications we had received about the service since we last inspected on 19 September 2013. We also contacted a lay advocate and the local authority’s contracts and quality assurance officer to obtain their views about the service.

During our inspection we spoke with 12 people who use the service, the registered manager and 12 care staff. We also looked at records which included five care plans, four staff files and other records relating to the management of the service.

We spent time observing care and support being delivered in communal areas. We also used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us.

After the visit we contacted the relatives of 12 people who use the service and asked them for their views about Rosswood Gardens.

Updated 5 February 2015

This inspection took place on 14 October 2014 and was unannounced. At the last inspection on 19 September 2013 we found the service was meeting the regulations we looked at.

Rosswood Gardens is a care home and short stay respite unit that provides accommodation and personal care for up to 23 people. The service specialises in the care and support of younger adults who have learning disabilities, including people living with autistic spectrum disorders. The accommodation is split across four adjoining houses that are self-contained each with their own separate entrance, communal lounge, and kitchen, toilets, bathroom and laundry room. People are free to use the communal areas in all three of the houses. Each person has their own bedroom. The respite unit can accommodate a maximum of six people at any one time and is not accessible from the main care home.

There were 13 people living in the home and two people staying in the respite unit when we visited.

The service had a registered manager in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) 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.

Although people told us Rosswood Gardens was a comfortable place to live; we found the environment was not always adequately maintained. For example, we found damaged and missing cupboard doors in all the laundry rooms, ripped curtains in most communal areas, an offensive smelling toilet and saw the rear garden was overgrown. We also found that systems used to assess the quality of the service had not identified the issues that we found during the inspection. This meant the quality monitoring processes were not effective as they had not ensured that people received appropriate care and support that met their needs.

You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.

People told us they felt safe living at Rosswood Gardens. Staff knew how to protect people if they suspected they were at risk of abuse or harm. Risks to people’s health, safety and wellbeing had been assessed and staff knew how to minimise and manage these to keep people safe from harm or injury.

There were enough properly trained and well supported staff working in the service to meet people’s needs. People told us, and we saw that staff had built up good working relationships with people using the service and were familiar with their individual needs and preferences.

People told us they were happy living at the home. They also said staff were kind and caring, and our observations and discussions with relatives supported this. We saw staff treated people with dignity, respect and compassion.

Staff supported people to keep healthy and well through regular monitoring of their general health and wellbeing. Where there were any issues or concerns about a person’s health or wellbeing staff ensured they received prompt care and attention from appropriate health and social care professionals.

People were also encouraged to drink enough and eat sufficient amounts of nutritionally well balanced food.

Care plans were in place which reflected people’s specific needs and their individual choices and beliefs for how they lived their lives. People were appropriately supported by staff to make decisions about their care and support needs. People were involved in developing and regularly reviewing their care plans, and we saw people were supported to make decisions about their care and support.

People had access to their local community and could choose to participate in a variety of interesting and fulfilling in-house and community based social, educational and vocational activities. We saw staff encouraged and supported people to be as independent as they wanted to be. People were also encouraged to maintain relationships that were important to them.

The service had a clear management structure and people who lived there, relatives and staff felt comfortable about sharing their views and talking to managers if they had any concerns or ideas to improve Rosswood Gardens. The manager and deputy manager demonstrated a good understanding of their role and responsibilities, and staff told us the managers were competent, supportive and fair.

There were effective systems in place to monitor the safety and quality of the service provided at Rosswood Gardens. The provider regularly sought people’s views about how the care and support they received could be improved.

The registered manager had received training in Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) to understand when an application should be made and in how to submit one. This helped to ensure people were not being deprived of their liberty unlawfully.