A Rushcliffe care home has been placed in special measures by the healthcare watchdog.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Care@Rainbow’s End in Shelford as inadequate following an inspection in May.
The home provides personal care for up to five people with a learning disability.
The inspection was carried out to check if improvements had been made following a previous inspection.
But inspectors found that staff were not appropriately trained and did not understand when safeguarding needed to be reported.
The report said staff hadn’t been trained in Makaton (a form of sign language) despite people living at the service using this as a communication method.
Following the inspection, the overall rating for the home, as well as the areas of safe, effective, and well-led, went down from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘inadequate’.
“The service has been placed in special measures which means it will be kept under review and, if CQC do not propose to cancel the provider’s registration, there will be a re-inspection within six months to check for significant improvements”, the CQC said.
A spokesperson for the home said they did not wish to comment.
The report stated: “We found 33 records of incidents where people had expressed distress or agitation. On six occasions staff had used restraint and on three occasions the person had been exposed to risk of psychological abuse.
“This meant people were at risk of avoidable harm because staff did not have guidance to follow on how to best support people in the least restrictive way.”
One resident at the home who had heart failure needed regular weight
monitoring – but staff failed to respond when the person had lost eight pounds in 20 days.
Rebecca Bauers, CQC’s director for people with a learning disability and autistic people said the watchdog “will not hesitate to take further enforcement action” if necessary.
She said: “When we inspected Care @ Rainbow’s End, it was concerning to see a deterioration in the quality of care being provided and find several areas that continued to be a risk to people’s safety and welfare.
“Leaders must now focus their attention on making the necessary improvements and making the culture in the service a more positive one to ensure people receive a better standard of care.
“Staff still weren’t meeting people’s basic care and support needs due to lack of appropriate training.
“We were told about incidents where staff were unsure of how to support people when they became distressed and agitated and had used restraint rather than less restrictive measures. This needs addressing as a matter of urgency.
“In addition, hygiene and infection prevention and control wasn’t being followed effectively throughout the home. People’s mobility equipment was visibly dirty, and bathrooms contained mould and limescale.”
