Thatcham care home rated as inadequate by health chiefs

Holly Grange Residential Home in Thatcham has been given an inadequate rating by health chiefs.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) visited the home on Cold Ash Hill in December to find widespread shortfalls in the quality and safety of the service, resulting in continued breaches of regulation.

They are now checking other properties owned by KN and S Ramdany, the registered providers.

This service has been rated 'requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ for six of the last seven inspections and requires improvement for three consecutive inspections.

“We undertook an unannounced comprehensive inspection of this service on 31 May 2022. Multiple breaches of legal requirements were found,” said the CQC.

“We have identified continued breaches in relation to good governance, safe care and treatment, staffing and notification of other incidents. We have identified a new breach in relation to consent to care.”

The overall rating for this service is ‘inadequate’ and the service is therefore in ‘special measures’.

This means the service is kept under review.

“If we do not propose to cancel the provider’s registration, we will re-inspect within six months to check for significant improvements.

“If the provider has not made enough improvement within this time frame and there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall rating, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures. This will mean we will begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will usually lead to cancellation of their registration or to varying the conditions of the registration.”

The latest report said the registered person had a track record of failing to provide good standards of safety, which placed people at risk of harm, and that they did not regularly review people’s dependency in relation to safe staffing levels to make sure that staff were able to respond to people’s changing needs.

But staff were praised for their warm and meaningful interactions with people.

Holly Grange Residential Home is a care home providing personal care for up to 19 people aged 65 and over, some of whom may be living with dementia.

At the time of inspection, the service was supporting nine people in one extended and adapted building on the ground and first floor of three storeys.

“We spoke with three people who use the service and two visiting relatives about their experience of the care provided,” said the CQC.

“We spoke with 13 members of staff, including the registered person, the compliance manager, the cook, the activities co-ordinator, three senior support workers, four support workers and two agency staff. We spoke with three visiting health professionals including a diabetes nurse educator and two community mental health nurses.”