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Inspectors report 12 breaches of essential standards

The owners of a care home in Leicestershire have been told they must take immediate action to ensure the safety of people in their care.

Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission have found that Saffron House in Barwell was failing to meet 12 essential standards of quality and safety.   

A report which is published today identifies a series of concerns with safeguarding procedures, the standard of management, systems for assessing and monitoring the service, and support to staff.  

CQC has now given the provider, Downing Barwell Ltd, 28 days to produce plans to show how it intends to achieve compliance. By law, providers of care services have a legal responsibility to make sure they are meeting the essential standards of quality and safety.

The inspectors visited the home in response to concerns which were first raised through Leicestershire County Council's procedures to safeguard people from abuse. Since then CQC has been working closely with the council to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the residents.

While there is no immediate risk to the existing residents, the council has now stopped new admissions to the home.

The CQC report highlights four main areas of concern.

Safeguarding people from abuse: Inspectors said that the lack of management intervention, monitoring and action was placing people at risk to their welfare, health and safety.

Supporting workers: Staff knowledge, skills and expertise did not ensure that the care needs of people were met safely. The lack of supervision did not ensure that issues were addressed with individual staff in relation to their training needs.

Assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision: The people living in the home were being put at risk by ineffective management, assessment and quality monitoring systems.

Requirements relating to the registered manager: The registered manager's lack of skills, experience and effectiveness were significantly increasing poor quality and safety outcomes for the residents.

Saffron House was also failing to meet standards covering Respecting and involving people who use services, Consent to care and treatment, Care and welfare of people who use services, Cooperating with other providers, Management of medicines, Requirements relating to workers, Complaints and Records.

Andrea Gordon, regional director of CQC in the East and West Midlands, said 

that her staff will continue to keep Saffron House under close review and would take action if it became necessary.   

She said: “It is clear that the management failures we found showed that people who live at Saffron House have not been receiving the quality of care, support and treatment which they must have. We will be taking further action to protect their interests.

“We heard of numerous incidents which were reported by staff in the daily records for people. But there was no evidence that changes in needs following these incidents were investigated or that the incidents were passed on to the relevant agencies such as the local authority, or dealt with properly.

“Every single person living in Saffron House is entitled to have their needs assessed properly and to be involved in important decisions about their care and treatment. But they weren’t always consulted, care plans weren’t updated and when things did go wrong the home didn’t seem capable of taking appropriate action.  

“We need to ensure that people living at the home are not at any immediate risk of harm, which is why we have been working closely with the council and others under the safeguarding procedures. If there was evidence that people were at serious risk, we would take further action.” 

For further information please contact the CQC press office on 0207 448 9401 or out of hours on 07917 232 143.

• Read the full report on Saffron House

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.

We are introducing a new regulatory system that brings the NHS, independent healthcare and adult social care under 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 rely on people who use services and those who care for and treat them to tell us about the quality and safety of services. This feedback 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.