About the service Cherry Blossom is a residential care home providing personal care and accommodation to six people with a learning disability. At the time of the inspection three people lived at the home.
The service has been designed taking into account best practice guidance and the principles and values underpinning Registering the Right Support (RRS) in respect of the environment. The building design fitted into the residential area as it was domestic in style in keeping with other homes in the street. There were deliberately no identifying signs, intercom, cameras, industrial bins or anything else outside to indicate it was a care home. Staff were also discouraged from wearing anything that suggested they were care staff when coming and going with people.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
People were not always safeguarded by the systems in place relating to the use of physical intervention and lessons were not always learned about how to better support people during periods where they have behaviours that challenge.
Staff were not always recruited safely as not all required checks had been undertaken prior to commencing work at the home.
At the time of inspection known fire risks were not always managed to mitigate the risk of harm to service users and staff. Following the inspection action was taken to address these known risks.
People received their medicines when needed and staff where trained to administer people’s medicines safely.
Peoples support plans where not always updated to ensure they reflected people’s individual needs and had not considered the impact of COVID19 restrictions on people using the service.
A lack of oversight meant potential risks to people’s safety had not been responded to appropriately. Systems to monitor the quality and safety of the service were not effective and had not identified the areas for improvement found at this inspection.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection and update
This service was registered with us on 09 April 2019 and this is the first inspection.
Why we inspected
The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about safeguarding, use of restraint, and in relation to the care being provided. Additional concerns were shared with us by the Clinical Commissioning team. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks.
We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them.
You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Cherry Blossom on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement
We are mindful of the impact of the COVID19 pandemic on our regulatory function. This meant we took account of the exceptional circumstances arising as a result of the COVID19 pandemic when considering what enforcement action was necessary and proportionate to keep people safe as a result of this inspection. We will continue to discharge our regulatory enforcement functions required to keep people safe and to hold providers to account where it is necessary for us to do so.
We have identified breaches in relation to person centred care, safeguarding, recruitment practices and governance.
Full information about CQC’s regulatory response to the more serious concerns found during inspections is added to reports after any representations and appeals have been concluded.
Follow up
We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.
Special Measures
The service rating in two domains 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.