Devon care home rated inadequate for second time

The CQC said Moors Park House would remain under special measures whilst improvements were made

A care home in Devon has been put under "special measures" to protect residents after it was rated inadequate for a second time, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has said.

Moors Park House in Bishopsteignton, run by Moors Park (Bishopsteignton) Limited, provides accommodation for up to 37 older people, some living with dementia.

The CQC inspection was carried out to check on improvements the home was told to make at its last inspection in April 2023, with a focus on safeguarding and management of services.

Its overall rating remained inadequate, its rating for how effective the service was increased from inadequate to good and the caring and responsive category remained as requiring improvement.

Moors Park Limited has been contacted for comment.

Catherine Campbell, CQC deputy director of operations in the south, said the service would remain under special measures whilst improvements were made.

She said: "Leaders had still not taken enough action to address our serious concerns around the quality of care being provided - the service had a high reliance on agency staff which impacted care, especially when they hadn’t worked at the service before.

"Staff told us vacancies meant sometimes people didn’t get out of bed or have a bath or shower, nor did they get to spend quality time with other people at the home.

"Staff and the local authority had raised concerns about staffing levels with managers, but this hadn’t been addressed by leaders."

'Risk of harm'

The CQC said some residents were not receiving their prescribed medicines with errors made as staff could not be sure if people had received them correctly, and people were not always protected from abuse and improper treatment.

Ms Campbell said: "We found incidents where staff didn’t always identify allegations of abuse or make safeguarding referrals to the local authority in line with the services’ policy.

"This put people at risk of harm as incidents weren’t always investigated properly and lessons learned to help prevent them from happening again."

Other issues flagged included overgrown fingernails with chipped varnish and dirt beneath the nails, no system in place to monitor how much people drank risking dehydration and concerns about the consistency of quality care.