Devon care home rated inadequate for second time

A care home in Devon has been put under "special measures" to protect residents after it was rated inadequate for a second time, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has said.

Moors Park House in Bishopsteignton, run by Moors Park (Bishopsteignton) Limited, provides accommodation for up to 37 older people, some living with dementia.

The CQC inspection, to check on improvements the home had been told to make in April 2023, had again delivered an overall inadequate rating.

Moors Park Limited said the inspection, which happened six months ago, "in no way reflects the way the service is currently".

Moors Park Limited said: "Moors Park House has been in a quality support process run by Devon County Council with regular visits to the service and regular meetings to discuss progress.

"The CQC inspector has participated in these meetings and is therefore fully aware of the progress made over the past six months."

The CQC's rating for how effective Moors Park's service was, increased from inadequate to good and the caring and responsive category remained as requiring improvement.

Catherine Campbell, CQC deputy director of operations in the south, said the service would remain under special measures whilst improvements were made.

She said: "Leaders had still not taken enough action to address our serious concerns around the quality of care being provided - the service had a high reliance on agency staff which impacted care, especially when they hadn’t worked at the service before.

"Staff told us vacancies meant sometimes people didn’t get out of bed or have a bath or shower, nor did they get to spend quality time with other people at the home.

"Staff and the local authority had raised concerns about staffing levels with managers, but this hadn’t been addressed by leaders."

The CQC said some residents were not receiving their prescribed medicines with errors made as staff could not be sure if people had received them correctly, and people were not always protected from abuse and improper treatment.

Ms Campbell said: "We found incidents where staff didn’t always identify allegations of abuse or make safeguarding referrals to the local authority in line with the services’ policy.

"This put people at risk of harm as incidents weren’t always investigated properly and lessons learned to help prevent them from happening again."

Other issues flagged included overgrown fingernails with chipped varnish and dirt beneath the nails, no systems to monitor how much people drank, risking dehydration and concerns about the consistency of quality care.

Moors Park Limited said: "A careful reading of the report does demonstrate improvements at the time of the inspection compared to previously, and whilst we acknowledge that there were occasions when processes were not fully effective, the intent was there.

"We observe that although the report points to deficiencies in quality assurance, nevertheless residents and families were reporting general satisfaction with the service."

The company said that it felt "unfair to criticise" its use of agency staff due to a "well publicised national shortage of care workers" and that it would put in a request for a review of the rating to be changed to 'requires improvement'.

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