St Annes care home told improvements needed after inspectors blasted hygiene, safety and leadership issues

The Villarose Rest Home, on Clifton Drive South, St Annes, was given the ‘requires improvement’ rating in the categories of both safety and its effectiveness and the lowest rating of ‘inadequate’ in the way it was led.

Although not all aspects of the service were poor, the overall standard had declined since the home’s previous ‘good’ report in 2017.

During the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in November 2022, several safety issues came to light.

The report found that the home failed to ensure that equipment for people to call for assistance was consistently available, such as emergency pull cords in people's en-suite bathrooms being tied up and inaccessible.

Drinks were served in containers with corroded lids which were hard to keep clean, thus making it hard to avoid the spread of infection.

The home failed to deploy enough staff to ensure the home was clean and hygienic.

Visitors also told inspectors there was not enough staff to meet people's needs and staff did not have time to help people to manage their continence.

It was found that five people did not have the opportunity for a bath or shower for 18 days.

The home failed to ensure protocols on when to administer additional medicines, if required. This placed the person at risk of receiving medicines too soon, too late or not at all dependant on the staff members individual assessment of the situation.

One of the inspectors noted: “We found no evidence people had been harmed however, systems were either not in place or robust enough to demonstrate medicines were managed safely. This placed people at risk of harm.”

Regarding the 'Inadequate' rating for leadership, inspectors found that quality of life had been impacted by inconsistency in leadership, staffing, recording and support.

One relative said that due to a high staff turnover, "their family member had not bathed recently because they did not know staff well."

Despite this, residents spoke positively about their care and about the new manager and how they were looking forward to the new measures that would be put in place to improve the service.

The Villarose Rest Home did not wish to comment.