Inspectors have served a notice on a “dangerous” Peterculter care home service for failing to “keep people safe”.
The Care Inspectorate visited Tigh a’Chomainn Camphill Community earlier this year for a surprise inspection, and raised serious concerns about several aspects of its running.
The Craigton Crescent home provides care to people with learning difficulties.
Of the five areas the home was judged on, three were rated the lowest grade possible for leadership, staff team, and setting.
Two other areas – wellbeing support and planning – received a ‘weak’ rating, which is the second lowest.
Following the inspection on August 7, the inspectorate issued the service with an improvement notice aswell as a “letter of serious concern” in relation to the environment.
Peterculter care home ‘mishandled more than one violent incident’
The Care Inspectorate found that Tigh-A’Chomainn was “not performing well in relation to keeping people safe”.
The manner in which aggressive incidents were handled was “ineffective”, and in some instances placed people at risk of harm.
The report concluded: “The management team, as a whole, mishandled more than one violent incident and aftermath.”
Also, the environment was described as “poor” with “some dangerous areas”.
“There were immediate safety issues in relation to hot water and windows,” the inspectors said.
They also raised issues about areas of mould and loose skirting boards.
Outside the premises, asbestos roofing, a broken pathway, and missing safety rails needed attention straightaway.
Low ‘safe-staff levels’ were also highlighted.
The report said: “Overnight there were only foundation year co-workers in the house.
“Their training was not as in-depth as the paid co-workers, and most could not give medication overnight if it was requested.”
Leadership was another area labelled unsatisfactory, with vague staff roles and responsibilities meaning some tasks were either not dealt with quickly enough or not at all.
The registered manager was also unable to source documents, meaning the leadership team could not access potentially important information.
The inspectors did not however that “people did not seem to be unhappy, and were busy throughout the day”.
Care home responds following unsatisfactory report
A spokesperson for the Tigh a’Chomainn Camphill Community said “the safety and wellbeing of everyone in our care is our priority”.
“We are disappointed that on this occasion we were not assessed as meeting the highest standards we strive for and sincerely apologise for this,” they continued.
“Since the inspection, we have been working with our stakeholders to ensure we address all the concerns raised in the report and correct any shortcomings within agreed timescales. We believe we have made good progress in achieving this.
“Since we were inspected, we have been working very closely with the Care Inspectorate and Aberdeen Health and Social Care partnership to implement agreed steps to ensure our procedures and practices meet the highest standards that are rightly expected of us at Tigh a’Chomainn Camphill Community.”
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