‘No effective governance system in place’ at Eastbourne care home, according to recent inspection

Care homes are judged on five categories - safety, effectiveness, care given, responsiveness, and how well-led it is.

The Chase Rest Home in Southfield Road cares for up to 24 people with dementia or other mental health needs. It was inspected in September and the report was published this month (November 2022). On safety and effectiveness the home was ranked as ‘requires improvement’, care given and responsiveness were ‘good’, but the well-led category was rated as ‘inadequate’. The previous inspection in 2018 rated the home as ‘good’.

The report said: “The service was not well-led. There was no effective governance system in place to ensure the service was meeting regulation. In the absence of a registered manager, the provider had not maintained oversight of the service to ensure that people's safety was maintained.”

It said paperwork hasn’t been maintained to the right standard - care plans and risk assessments were ‘confusing and contradictory’. As a result, staff didn’t always have up to date information on the people they were caring for.

According to the report, there was no system in place to manage the maintenance of the home such as fire safety and general maintenance. On the subject of safeguarding, staff didn’t show a clear understanding on how to safeguard people from abuse.

Other areas of concern were staff training and the recruitment process, people’s nutritional needs, and cleanliness of the home. The home now needs to provide an action plan for the CQC.

The home was approached for a comment.

View the full report here

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