Care home shuts after CQC finds 'strong urine smell'

Sonia Lodge Care Home looked after people with dementia

A care home has closed down after inspectors reported several failings and placed it in special measures.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated Sonia Lodge Care Home in Walmer, Kent, "inadequate" in a report released on Friday, following a September inspection.

Fresh bedding was stored with "unclean bedding, which smelled strongly of urine" and there was also a strong urine smell in rooms, corridors and the lounge, inspectors said.

Service operator Foxley Lodge Care told the BBC it closed the home in October due to various "mounting pressures", including the regulator's findings, and apologised "for the distress and disruption caused".

According to the CQC's report, which detailed eight regulation breaches, inspectors were "not assured that the provider had identified and recorded all of the incidents or allegations of abuse" at the home.

A resident's relative told inspectors about a recent safeguarding incident that the CQC and local authority were not informed about, according to the regulator.

Inspectors said a relative told them they "felt their loved one was neglected at the home".

Many staff members were recently recruited because the provider "no longer had a licence to sponsor staff from other countries", according to the report.

The service was "managed day to day by inexperienced staff whilst the manager was away," inspectors said.

The CQC also found medicine was not safely managed and Sonia Lodge residents were "not always referred to other health care professionals when they should have been".

Inspectors reported a relative told them their loved one "was sent alone" to hospital and found "wandering about the hospital confused".

'Undignified conditions'

CQC deputy director for Kent Serena Coleman said: "We found that leaders had allowed standards of care to fall to a level that placed people at serious risk of harm."

Sonia Lodge residents had been "living in unsafe and undignified conditions", she said.

The home had been in special measures once before, in 2022, after inspectors found urine smells and residents threatening to hit one another without staff intervention.

Foxley Lodge Care said "continued operational challenges" had made it "unsustainable to provide the level of care residents rightfully expect".

"The decision was extremely difficult and was taken only after all options had been carefully considered," according to a spokesperson.

The company said it faced pressures including rising costs, difficulty recruiting and "insufficient external support for residents with dementia and complex needs".

A spokesperson said residents, of which there were 20 at the time of the CQC inspection, were moved to "appropriate alternative accommodation".