Concerns over falls and risk assessments lead to damning inspection for Wigan borough care home

The Care Quality Commission triggered the inspection at Lakeview on Ena Crescent, which took place throughout October and November, following concerns over falls in the home and risk management.

In the report published on January 25, inspectors spoke to “a minority” of relatives who told them they had observed poor management of falls within the home. “This included a delay in staff responding to people falling and subsequent safety measures not being implemented effectively”, the report stated.

Despite this, no risk of harm to residents was found.

The report found that the key inconsistencies lay within risk assessments and medication records – which led to the ‘Requires Improvement’ grade for the factors of how well-led and how safe the service is. This meant that the care home was given an overall grade of “Requires improvement” despite scoring “Good” for the categories of “Effective, Responsive and Caring”.

There were 30 residents living at the care home when the inspection took place. The service provides personal and nursing care to people with complex needs, people living with dementia and people living with a brain injury.

“The provider had robust systems in place for monitoring and assessing risk,” the report said. “Records included significant amounts of detail.

“However, in some instances we found inconsistencies within people’s support plans and risk assessments. One person’s moving and handling risk assessment had been updated to reflect an increase in their needs.

“However, related risk assessments which involved moving and handling support had not been updated to reflect the additional support needed. We discussed this with the provider who acknowledged care plans and risk assessments contained too much information which was causing inconsistencies in their records.”

The provider, run by Lakeview Health Care Limited, was heavily praised in the report however – especially when it came to caring. An example was shown with an interview with one relative who said: “I can go whenever I want; they work around me.

“Their routine has changed coming out of hospital and the staff are really accommodating. They let me stay in the family room one night as [relative] wasn’t well at all.

“At 1am in the morning they came to knock for me because they were up, alert and able to talk so they didn’t want me to miss the opportunity to speak with [relative].”

A spokesperson for Lakeview said: “We pride ourselves on supporting people to live their lives safely, independently and doing the things that matter to them, and we take all feedback from the CQC extremely seriously. While we are pleased to be rated ‘Good’ by the CQC in most areas, we were of course disappointed that the CQC’s latest report found that we had areas for improvement.

“We have already begun taking steps to make these changes including introducing a new, more efficient, care planning process and through enhanced staff training. We will continue working hard to make sure that these improvements are sustained – and will involve our service users and staff teams in making sure everything we do reflects their wishes and needs.

“We look forward to being able to demonstrate our progress when the CQC’s inspectors next visit Lakeview.”