Care home rated 'inadequate' after owner jailed for defrauding residents of £4.1m

A care home in Southport has been rated 'inadequate', just a month after its owner was jailed for defrauding residents of millions of pounds.

In August, 63-year-old David Barton was found guilty of defrauding wealthy, female residents at Barton Park Nursing Home. Six elderly residents were cheated out of £4.1m and Barton was sentenced to 21 years in prison and banned from being a director for a maximum of 15 years.

The local authority commissioning team served 28 days' notice to terminate the home's contract with the registered provider, Choiceclassic Ltd “in light of the guilty verdict of one their directors” and the majority of the home’s residents have now been rehoused by Sefton Council.

The care home is currently still in operation but is forbidden from taking on new residents, without prior written permission from the Care Quality Commission (CQC). This also includes people on short-term placements or respite care. This condition will only be lifted when inspectors are satisfied the service is safe and capable enough to care for more residents, or if the home proves this to be the case and applies to remove the condition.

The home was originally inspected by the CQC on 5 and 6 July 2018, but a further visit was carried out 25 July 2018 “to check recent concerns”.

Inspectors found the home was not "adequately staffed" and "medication was not always managed safely". In addition, "the process for administering Controlled Drugs (CDs) was unsafe and not in line with best practice".

They revealed in the report that they were also "made aware by the local authority that some people's next of kin was still named as the director who had just been found guilty and sentenced for acts of fraud against people who had lived at Barton Park".

The report said: "CQC have closely monitored the home since a criminal investigation began in relation to directors of the registered provider, Choiceclassic Ltd. We have been unable to report on this aspect of the inspection under the Well-Led domain due to reporting restrictions being in place.

"Following this verdict, CQC has followed their own regulatory processes to ensure the safe running of the home. This included imposing conditions on the registered provider's registration to prevent the directors from entering Barton Park or engaging in the regulated activity of the home. Following this inspection, we have imposed a further condition that restricts the service from admitting any new service users given the concerns that we found."

A particularly damning observation in the report was made about the lack of continuity within the role of registered manager. It said: "During day one of our inspection, there was a registered manager in post. However, by day two of our inspection the registered manager had been changed, and the deputy manager was on leave, which left a new manager who had started in post the same day as the overall decision maker of the home."

In April 2018 there had been a "focused" inspection at Barton Park Nursing Home where the CQC discovered a breach in relation to the fire doors and they duly escalated the matter with Merseyside Fire and Rescue service. Shortly after, the registered manager of the home assured all parties that this had been rectified.

However, the CQC found in their most recent visit that "the service was still in breach of regulations in relation to this [the fire regulations], and we escalated our findings from this inspection in relation to the fire safety of the home to Merseyside Fire and Rescue service."

Merseyside Fire and Rescue service also conducted an inspection of the premises and “found concerns relating to some of the fire safety of Barton Park.”

Also, a "dignity" audit and several medication audits had not been completed since the first quarter of 2018 and the service wasn’t always working in accordance with the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Despite this criticism from the CQC, two residents told inspectors, “they liked living at the home and liked the staff.”