A Merseyside care home was ordered to improve after an unannounced visit from inspectors.
Eccleston Court care home, in St Helens, was subject to a surprise inspection from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) earlier this year The report found that the home's service "required improvement".
The home was handed the same rating in the previous inspection, in November 2020. The most recent inspection, carried out between April and May 2022, is the first since the home was placed under provider Park Homes in 2021.
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CQC inspections rate a care provider on five categories: whether the service is caring, safe, effective, responsive and well-led. Eccleston Court was ranked as requiring improvement for four out of the five categories, while it was rated as "good" in terms of being caring.
Part of the report states: "People did not always have access to information that met their needs. For example, menus were in small print, which some people were unable to read and make choices from”.
As well as this, inspectors noted that "medicines were not always managed safely", contributing to this is the fact that "unlabelled prescribed drinks for people were left in the communal dining areas”.
In addition to this, at the time of the inspection, it was stated that "a number of medicine errors had recently been reported”. Despite this, the report does state that “effective safeguarding procedures were in place”.
In relation to how well-led the home is, the report states that "The transfer from the previous provider had not been well planned, including the integration of new systems and procedures”.
A spokesperson for Park Homes said: "We have received the recent report from the Care Quality Commission for Eccleston Court, we are pleased that the caring nature of the home has been acknowledged and highlighted within the report and fully accept and apologise to the people we support and our families that there are areas where it was clear that we need to make improvements.
“Since the inspection, we have already made significant improvements and are taking all the necessary steps to ensure that these improvements are embedded and sustained, we have allocated additional management resources to support with this and ensure that our usually high standards are met again at the home.”
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