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Havant care home failing to meet five essential standards.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has told Dolphin Court Care Home in Havant that it must take swift action to improve services at the home.

Following visits in June 2011, CQC inspectors found that the care provided fell short of the essential standards of quality and safety people should be able to expect from a care home.

Dolphin Court Care Home is owned by the Royal Mencap Society. It is registered to accommodate 12 people with learning disabilities.

CQC has told the Royal Mencap Society that it will be monitoring Dolphin Court Care Home closely and will hold it to account if improvements are not made swiftly. The regulator will not hesitate to take further action to ensure the safety of people who use services, staff and the public.

The CQC report, which is published yesterday, highlights three areas of major concern.

Care and welfare

The care planning documents used in the home did not accurately reflect the needs of people who use the service and do not provide detailed information to staff about how people’s needs should be met. This means people are at risk of receiving care or treatment that is inappropriate or unsafe. 

Nutrition

We found an auditing record from April 2011 that identified fluid monitoring charts were not being completed correctly. The systems for ensuring that people identified as at risk of dehydration receive adequate fluids were not effective and increased the risks to people. 

Safeguarding people

The registered provider did not take appropriate action to ensure that people using the service are protected from the risk of abuse. The failure to respond to unexplained bruising of one person and the lack of understanding of some staff about the correct procedures to report allegations of abuse meant abuse may remain unreported. 

CQC Regional Director for the South East, Roxy Boyce, said: “The care at Dolphin Court Care Home has fallen short of the standards people have a right to expect. The provider is implementing improvements in services at the home, which we welcome, and we will continue to scrutinise this service very closely to ensure these improvements are made and sustained.” 

Under the Health and Social Care Act 2008, the Care Quality Commission has a number of enforcement powers that enable it to act swiftly when services are failing people. These include issuing warning notices, restricting the services that a provider can offer or the way it is provided; or, in the most serious cases, suspending or cancelling a service. CQC can also issue financial penalty notices and cautions or prosecute the provider for failing to meet essential standards. 

For further information please contact the CQC press office on 0207 448 4502 or out of hours on 07917 232 143.

Notes to editor

• The full report is available here

About the Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of all health and adult social care in England. Our aim is to make sure that better care is provided for everyone, whether it is in hospital, in care homes, in people’s own homes, or anywhere else that care is provided. We also seek to protect the interests of people whose rights are restricted under the Mental Health Act. We promote the rights and interests of people who use services and we have a wide range of enforcement powers to take action on their behalf if services are unacceptably poor.

Under a new regulatory system introduced by government, the NHS, independent healthcare and adult social care must meet a single set of essential standards of quality and safety for the first time. We register health and adult social care services if they meet essential standards, we monitor them to make sure that they continue to do so and we respond quickly if there are concerns that standards are not being maintained.  We do this by closely monitoring a wide range of information about the quality and safety of services, including the views of people who use services, and through assessment and inspection The feedback from people who use services is a vital part of our dynamic system of regulation which places the views, experiences, health and wellbeing of people who use services at its centre.