A care home where residents with dementia were woken up at 4.30am has been found to require improvement by inspectors.
Care Quality Commission (CQC) Inspectors who visited Downside House, Ventnor, in October, said records showed staff regularly assisted two people with dementia and high-level care needs to wash, dress and get out of bed as early as 4.30am.
The previous manager at the home had told night staff to get residents up from 5am, and there was no indication people had woken up naturally, or attempts had been made to resettle them back to sleep.
Care is ‘Good’
The home was found to ‘require improvement’ in four areas — safe, effective, responsive, and well-led — but found to be ‘good’ for care.
The home had previously been rated ‘good’.
Caring staff encouraged people to be independent and would patiently assist them to eat. Staff were seen to kneel down to people’s eye level when communicating and listened to them with interest.
However, inspectors noted staff sometimes took a ‘task-focused’ approach.
Undertake to action recommendations in timely fashion
The management at the home said it was fully committed to working with the CQC, following the report.
A spokesperson said:
“We take their report very seriously and of course undertake to action their recommendations in timely fashion.”
Garden inaccessible for residents with mobility issues
People’s views were not always considered. Last summer, residents at the home said they would like to see the garden ‘back up and running’ and have a garden party or barbecue.
However, inspectors noted the garden remained accessible only to people without mobility issues, with no path to the greenhouse or vegetable garden. No garden party or barbecue had taken place in the summer as requested.
Expiry dates on creams were not always properly recorded.
In one instance, a person had three different creams used on an area of their body regularly, but staff members were unable to confirm which creams should be used.
Care home: Fully committed
A spokesperson for the home said:
“Our management and staff team are fully committed to their role of providing a safe and caring environment and we acknowledge our overall rating ‘requires improvement’.
“On a more positive note, the CQC do acknowledge our service is caring — and rated it ‘good’.
“We encourage anyone interested in Downside House to read the full report to put the assessments in a context.”
This article is from the BBC’s LDRS (Local Democracy Reporter Service) scheme, which OnTheWight is taking part in. Some alterations by OnTheWight. Ed
Image: khrawlings under CC BY 2.0
