A Southall care home has been given a requires improvement rating following the publication of an inspection by the Care Quality Commision (CQC) on 31st December. 

Shackleton Medical Centre is a care home in Southall which specialises in care for people with Diabetes, Epilepsy, Early Stages of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, other forms of dementia and was inspected by the CQC on 2nd September and the report was published on 31st December, revealing that the care home "requires improvement". 

The CQC rates the degree to which services are safe, effective, caring, responsive, and well-led, and all of these areas were rated as "requires improvement" (the second lowest rating), aside from safety which was given "inadequate" (the lowest rating). 

The report said about the safety of Shackleton Medical Centre: "The provider had not always ensured the environment was safe and suitable. They had also not always ensured there was sufficient guidance for staff on how to provide care in a person-centred manner.  

"People's communication support needs were not always identified. There was a range of quality assurance processes in place, but these were not always robust enough to indicate to the provider where improvements or action were required.  

"Staff had not always completed the training identified as mandatory by the provider or competency assessments such as those with moving and handling before they could work with people. 

"During the inspection there was a volunteer at the home who was working in the home who had previously been called to replace staff who were not able to work.  

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"When we asked the administrative staff at the home for this person's training and induction records, they confirmed there were no records as this person as they were not employed by the home.  

"The provider was unable to confirm they had followed a robust recruitment process for this person to demonstrate safe recruitment processes were followed." 

The report said that it took the Covid-19 pandemic into account when making recommendations, and therefore would continue to monitor Shackleton and have requested an action plan on how they intend to improve their service, but no immediate action would be taken. 

The report said that the care home was not safe because they frequently had specific plans for residents, but without doing a risk assessment, for example a resident who was allowed to leave with family members, but they had not provided guidance on how to mitigate risks when this happened. 

However, in an interview with MyLondon, Rosie Hall, the manager of Shackleton Medical Centre, felt that the report was not fair to the care home. 

She said: "The inspector has previous history at Shackleton and we won a previous appeal against her. The same inspector came in again even though there was now a conflict of interest. This was the most unfair and prejudicial inspection I have ever been part of." 

You can read the full report here.