Working at Chilton Meadows Care Home

Not enough staff on shifts, so people wait up to 30 minutes or more for help and care staff feel overstretched and unable to do showers or chats.

Staff are so limited, they don’t have enough staff. I ring the bell they come and go away again, longest wait can be half an hour... Another staff member said, “There should be 5 carers, but we have been told we have to go down to 4 staff, because we are not full so we can cope with only 4 carers, but we can’t.”

Frequent changes in unit managers mean poor communication, no team meetings, and staff feel unsettled and unsupported.

We have had 3 unit managers on Beech since I have been here, and the current one started 2 months ago but has not been around for a while. The impact is we don’t have unit meetings and communication is lacking.

Unsafe medication practices like unsecured creams and gaps in records make it hard to give medicines correctly and safely.

We found that topical medicines were not dated when opened and were not being stored securely... There were some gaps in records... This is the third inspection where we have had concerns about the safe management of medicines.