Background to this inspection
Updated
9 February 2022
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.
As part of CQC’s response to care homes with outbreaks of COVID-19, we are conducting reviews to ensure that the Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) practice is safe and that services are compliant with IPC measures. This was a targeted inspection looking at the IPC practices the provider has in place. We also asked the provider about any staffing pressures the service was experiencing and whether this was having an impact on the service.
This inspection took place on 18 January 2022 and was announced. We gave the service 24 hours’ notice of the inspection.
Updated
9 February 2022
We carried out this unannounced inspection on 15, 16, 18 and 19 January 2018. At our last inspection in October 2016 we rated this service “Requires Improvement”. At this inspection we found that the service was now “Good”.
Sue Starkey House and Shipton House provides care and support to people living in specialist ‘extra care’ housing. Extra care housing is purpose-built or adapted single household accommodation in a shared site or building. The accommodation is rented, and is the occupant’s own home. People’s care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for extra care housing; this inspection looked at people’s personal care and support service.
People using the service lived in one of two blocks of flats in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Sue Starkey House consists of 32 self-contained single flats and eight double flats and Shipton House consists of 13 single flats. Both buildings have shared facilities such as a communal lounge and kitchen, laundry rooms and bathrooms and staff offices.
Not everyone using this service receives regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided. At the time of our inspection the service was providing personal care to 30 people, including older people and people with physical and learning disabilities.
The service had a registered manager, who was the provider’s manager for the area. 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 our previous inspection we made a recommendation about how the service carried out checks of people’s finances and the equipment that was used to provide care. There were now systems in place to make sure that equipment was safe and that finances were checked to protect people from loss or financial abuse. Managers had systems in place to ensure that staff understood what was required of them and communicated well, and checked that care was delivered as planned. Managers investigated and made changes when things had gone wrong.
People were supported to express their views about the service and managers took action accordingly. We saw that complaints were investigated and appropriate measures taken when these were upheld.
The provider had systems in place to safeguard people from abuse and avoidable harm, and had worked with the police and local authority to address current issues which may affect people’s safety. We found that people received their medicines safely, although audits did not always detect some problems with recording.
There were suitable numbers of staff on duty who were recruited in line with best practice. We found that at Sue Starkey House there was a high reliance on agency staff, and the provider was attempting to recruit new care workers to address this. People told us that staff were kind and treated them with respect; some people expressed concerns about staff skills in relation to cooking which managers were addressing through making information available and providing additional training. There were measures in place to make sure that care workers received essential training and managers checked they had the right skills and knowledge.
People’s care was designed and delivered in a way which met their needs, but we found that care plans were not always clear about people’s needs around continence. People received the right support to eat and drink and to stay well. There were varied and interesting activities programmes in place and this was a high organisational priority. We found that keyworking was not yet sufficiently developed to support people to express their views about how they received care and spent their time, but people’s care was reviewed regularly. The provider notified us when allegations were made about people and when serious incidents had occurred.