Ipswich care home forced to close after CQC reported residents at significant risk of 'unsafe care'

A care home in Ipswich has been forced to stop operating after the Care Quality Commission (CQC) reported the level of care as ‘Inadequate’.

Kent Lodge Residential Home in Woodbridge Road received more than five visits from the CQC since the beginning of the year after inspectors reported previous and ongoing concerns about the safety and quality of the care service.

Jemima Burnage, head of inspection for adult social care in the CQC’s central region, said: “People are entitled to services which provide safe, effective, compassionate and high-quality care and the owners of Kent Lodge Residential Home have failed their residents.

“The provider was placing people at significant risk of receiving inappropriate or unsafe care and made little attempt to address the issues we identified despite having several opportunities. For this reason we had no option but to cancel the registration.”

CQC inspectors found that the home was not meeting four of the five required regulations, including inadequate care records, inadequate provision of prescribed medication, a consistent lack of staff training and supervision and a lack of a robust quality assurance and monitoring systems.

In addition, inspectors reported that residents were also put at risk because the care provider did not perform criminal record checks on newly employed staff.

Kent Lodge has since appealed against the Commission's decision to stop it from operating, however a judge has decided to uphold the CQC's decision.

Since the report has been published Suffolk County Council have helped to move the residents to another care provider within the same area.

Ms Burnage continued: “Our priority is always the safety of people using health and social care services and we would not take this kind of action if we did not feel there was a serious risk to people, their health and well-being.”

Kent Lodge Residential Home's owner, Pauline Kent, has declined to comment.

Since 26 October the CQC has published 71 reports on the quality of care provided by adult social care services across England’s central region.

Following recent inspections, 45 care homes have been rated as ‘Good’, 21 have been rated ‘Requires Improvement’, four have been rated ‘Inadequate’ and one rated as ‘Outstanding’.

Under the CQC’s new programme of inspections, all of England’s adult social care services are given a rating according to whether they are safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.

Sue Howard, deputy chief inspector for adult social care in the central region of the UK, said: “People are entitled to services which provide safe, effective, compassionate and high-quality care. If that is what we find on inspection - we give the service a rating of ‘Good’, or ‘Outstanding’.

“Where we find that services are not good enough, we will give a rating of ‘Requires Improvement’ or ‘Inadequate’. If we find that a service requires improvement, we will expect them to provide us with a full plan setting out how they will address the issue. We will share our findings with local commissioners and we will return in due course to check that the required improvements have been made.

“Whenever we find a service to be ‘Inadequate’ we will consider taking further action on behalf of the people who use the service.”