Archived: Riverside Care Centre

Updated 17 July 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 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.

Our inspection took place on 29 and 30 April 2015 and was unannounced. The inspection was conducted by two inspectors.

The provider completed 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 reviewed information we held about the home, this included information received from the provider about deaths, accidents/incidents and safeguarding alerts which they are required to send us by law.

We requested information about the service from the Local Authority (LA). They have responsibility for funding people who use the service and monitoring its quality. We also requested information from an organisation who visits the home regularly advocating for people. Both organisations provided us with information we used as part of the planning process for our inspection.

On the day of our inspection there were 20 people living in the home. The accommodation was split between three houses. We spoke with eight people who were able to share their views with us, seven members of staff and the registered manager. We looked at the care records for three people, the recruitment and training records for five members of staff and records used for the management of the service; for example, staff duty rosters, accident records and records used for auditing the quality of the service. We undertook telephone calls to three relatives.

We 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 communicate with us.

Updated 17 July 2015

The inspection took place on the 29 and 30 April 2015 and was unannounced. At our last inspection on the 19 August 2014 the provider was meeting the regulations inspected.

Riverside Care Centre is registered to provide accommodation and support for 24 people who have been diagnosed with a learning disability and who require personal care. On the day of our inspection there were 20 people living in the home and there was a registered manager in post. 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.

People told us they felt safe when staff supported them.

Our observations were that there were enough staff to support people safely. However, records showed that there was not always enough staff on shift to keep people safe.

The environment in which people lived was not pleasant. Areas of the home needed to be maintained more consistently and decorated, to provide a homely place to live.

Staff were not being supported sufficiently. They were not receiving supervision regularly and not all staff were completing the provider’s required training courses to have the appropriate skills and knowledge to support people appropriately.

We found that the provider had the appropriate systems in place to meet the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and where people’s human rights could be restricted the appropriate approval was being sought.

People’s health care needs was not being screened regularly to enable staff to seek health care support where needed.

People were happy with the staff who supported them. Our observations were that staff were caring and kind to people.

People were able to make decisions about when they were supported by staff. People were also able to share their views about the service they received.

People’s independence, privacy and dignity was being respected.

People and relatives told us they knew how to complain and would speak with the manager if they had a complaint.

Whilst people were happy with the service and felt it was well led, we found that quality audits being carried out were not effective in identifying areas of concern. There was also no evidence that the provider was carrying out the appropriate checks on the quality of the service to ensure the quality of support people received was of a good quality.