North London care home placed in special measures following CQC inspection
A care home in Holloway, north London, has been rated Inadequate by the Care Quality Commission.
St Mungo’s Broadway – 2 Hilldrop Road, has been rated Inadequate overall. It was rated Inadequate for being safe, effective and well-led. It was rated Requires Improvement for being caring and responsive, following the inspection in November 2016.
St Mungo’s is a care home registered to accommodate up to 29 people with a history of alcohol misuse, homelessness and mental health conditions. On the days CQC inspected, the service was providing care for 27 men.
The home was unclean. The premises and equipment within the home were not maintained. Infection control was not being followed as adequate hand washing facilities were not always available and staff did not have access to sufficient personal protective equipment and cleaning materials.
People were not always receiving care from staff who were competent, skilled and experienced. The provider did not keep appropriate records of training, identify staff training needs or monitor when staff needed their training updated. Not all staff had appropriate regular supervision or annual appraisals.
A member of staff told inspectors: “We report to the managers that things are broken, toilets are blocked. They do nothing. Sinks are blocked, we cannot clean. There are infection control problems. They don’t listen. There are no strategies to help us manage the job.”
Inspectors found toilets and bathrooms to be extremely unclean and in poor repair. Toilets and surrounding areas such as walls, floors and bath panels were dirty with faecal matter and other body fluids. One toilet in particular contained a significant level of lime scale and some toilet seats were broken. Floors were dirty and sticky.
Bedrooms were unclean, with furniture in a poor state of repair. Some bedframes were loose and therefore not sturdy and mattresses and bedding contained cigarette burns.
On day one of the inspection, inspectors became aware that there were issues with the management of bedbugs at the home as they observed a pest controller visit and assess the affected bedrooms. However, this was not officially brought to the attention of the inspection team.
Inspectors communicated their significant concerns to senior management at St Mungo’s Community Housing Association during and after the inspection and an action plan was submitted to urgently address the areas of concern found during the inspection.
Debbie Ivanova, Deputy Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care for CQC in London, said: “People who use St Mungo’s deserve a good quality of care, which they are presently not receiving.
“The service has therefore now been placed into special measures. Services in special measures will be kept under review and, if we have not taken immediate action to propose to cancel the provider’s registration of the service, will be inspected again within six months. The expectation is that providers found to have been providing inadequate care should have made significant improvements within this timeframe.
“If not enough improvement is made within this timeframe so that there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures to begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will lead to cancelling their registration or to varying the terms of their registration within six months if they do not improve.”
To read the report in full please, visit: http://www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-124317862
Picture (c) Google Maps.
