Working at Beechy Knoll Care Home

Staffing keeps people safe but common areas sometimes go unsupervised for 20 minutes and staff say they need one more helper in mornings.

Throughout the day we observed periods of around 20 minutes where staff were not available to support people in communal areas. Some staff told us they thought the home would benefit from an additional care assistant each morning.

Activities only really happen with the one coordinator there, otherwise staff too busy and residents get bored.

When the activity coordinator was not at work they got bored as other staff did not have time to sit and do things with them.

Records for some as-needed medicines miss instructions for staff, plus small cleaning errors like trolleys in wrong spots.

Some PRN medicines did not have a corresponding protocol for staff to follow and one protocol did not contain enough information. A cleaner's trolley had been stored in the upstairs sluice room which posed a risk of cross-contamination.