26.10.06
Standards at a care home are still below minimum requirements
four years after it tried to suppress a health authority investigation into
complaints against it.
A report of an unannounced inspection carried out in July at the home,
Lynde House nursing home in Twickenham, south west London, shows that a series
of improvements must be undertaken within five months for it to meet minimum
legal standards.
The commission for social care inspection (CSCI), which regulates care
homes, also says that some of the reforms had been ordered in previous inspection
reports and should have already been completed.
The conclusions of the report come after a letter was disclosed under
the freedom of information act that showed the home’s solicitors threatened
to sue the south west London health authority if it published its 2002 report
into complaints by residents’ relatives. The FOIA Centre has been helping
relatives to obtain official documents relating to the home.
Lynde House’s solicitors also threatened to sue the independent
consultant commissioned by the heath authority to conduct the investigation.
The health authority still published the report, although it was delayed by
five months, and WHC never began proceedings over it.
That report made a series of damning findings ab-out Lynde House, saying
that it “allowed insufficient levels of staff to operate on occasions,”
and, “allowed inadequately trained staff to undertake the care tasks
and procedures required.”
The home was owned at the time by Westminster Health Care (WHC), whose
chief executive was then Dr Chai Patel, who is close to the Blair government
and who is one of the businessmen embroiled in the “cash-for-honours”
affair. He was one of the Labour donors nominated for a peerage, but the appointments
commission objected to his nomination.
Lynde House was one of three WHC homes that were the subject of an
expose on standards in 2001 in the Sunday Express.
WHC was later bought by Barchester Healthcare, one of Britain’s
biggest care home operators.
A spokeswoman for Barchester Healthcare, which bought WHC in 2004,
told the Daily Express, for an article published in August about
care homes and FOIA, that CSCI had indicated to the home that an unannounced
inspection report due imminently was “incredibly positive”. She
said. “It’s a good example of something that’s been turned
around hugely.”
“When Barchester took over Westminster, there was a period in
which they had to really bring up the standard of a lot of Westminster homes
to a standard that they think is appropriate.”
However, that report of the inspection has proved not to be as “incredibly
positive” as claimed.
The inspection examined 24 standards set out in the ‘national
minimum standards for care homes for older people’ and found that the
home met 14, but identified major shortfalls in two relating to resid-ents'
care plans, and minor shortfalls in a further eight.
It ordered 14 reforms to be completed by the end of next month to bring
the home up to statutory minimum requirements. Of these, said the report,
three should have been completed by March, and another one by July last year.
The report says, for example, that the home must complete improvements
to daily records and that this should have been done by July last year.
The home has, however, improved. The report says: “Improvements
have been made in care planning, however, this must be continued to make sure
that all needs are identified and reflected in care planned.
“Daily records are now starting to include specific details of
care given. Requirements made in relation to medications at the previous inspection
have been addressed.”
It continues: “Staff files examined were noted to include all
the required information in the standards and regulations... Improvements
have been made to training records.”
And the report praises the senior management for continuing “to
work proactively with CSCI to make sure that standards are met.”
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