A CARE home in Leonard Stanley has been rated as ‘requires improvement’ by a health watchdog.

When the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspected Highborder Lodge, they found that staffing levels could not ensure safe care and treatment of residents.

They also found that staff had failed to monitor and improve the quality and safety of residents when issues had been identified and brought to their attention.

In the inspection report published in December, the CQC stated: “As a result of the low staffing numbers, the staff said they were not able to spend quality time with the people they were supporting.

“During the morning, a number of people were sitting in the main lounge and one person was visibly anxious and requested support to go to the dining room.

“However, as there were no staff available at the time, the person was not supported.

“The day of the inspection was a particularly warm day and one person wanted the window to be opened, but no support was available.

“Due to this person’s anxiety over this, we opened the window for them, during this time, nobody came in to offer these people a drink.”

The registered manager, Caroline Wakefield, notified inspectors that the bathrooms were difficult to access for people with restricted mobility.

Staff had been using towels to help reduce the risk of falling in the bathrooms – this was deemed unsafe practice by the CQC, which also noted that this clearly failed a risk assessment.

Commenting on the report, Caroline, who has worked at Highborder Lodge for six years, told the SNJ: “I believe honesty is the best policy, there are improvements to be made but we have a very good standard of care, lots of families tell us how their loved ones enjoy their time here.

“We’ve improved our system for staffing ratios within the home, we appreciate every resident has different needs and that some require a lot more one-to-one care, people aren’t being neglected.

“It’s easy for the CQC to get the wrong end of the stick, they do a very good job but their new system doesn’t give them time to fully assess the service, to ask as many questions and gather as much evidence as they need to.”

The report continued: “All of the staff we spoke with informed us morale among staff was very low, comments included ‘I have never seen it this bad’ and ‘the staff are really unhappy’.

“One relative informed us their parent frequently complained to them how staff faces continually changed.

“Staff felt ‘spoken down to’ by management and when improvements were required it was ‘like being told off’."

One relative told inspectors they were reluctant to speak with the manager through fear of possible reprisals for raising the issues.