AN ASCOT nursing home has been slammed as "dangerous, ineffective, uncaring, unresponsive and poorly-led" by medical experts in its most recent health inspection.

Sandridge House in High Street, which cares for up to 38 people, was judged to be "inadequate" by inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the national health watchdog - who brought forward their planned visit because of a number of tip-offs from outside sources that people "had been harmed or were at risk of harm".

The care home was judged to be inadequate in the categories of 'safe, effective, responsive and well-led' and found to "require improvement" in terms of being 'caring'. 

In their report published on January 12, inspectors commented that people were not always safeguarded from abuse and neglected and though staff demonstrated good knowledge of what to do if they suspected someone had been inappropriately treated, not all of them had received regular training to ensure they were up to date. 

Infection control practices at the home meant people were at risk from cross-infection and when the nursing home had investigations carried out by the local authority following reported allegations of abuse or neglect, they did not take satisfactory steps to prevent recurrence or learn from the experience. 

A number of professionals who visited the care home expressed their concerns to inspectors about the standard and quality of care and warned they were concerned about a "lack of leadership, the use of agency staff and the absence of a large number of quality monitoring processes". 

Inspectors also felt there was insufficient appropriate training and supervision for registered nurses and care assistants to ensure they had the knowledge and skill necessary to effectively care for people.

They also felt people's feedback was not sufficiently sought and acted upon and complaints were ineffectively investigated, managed and responded to. 
A robust system for detecting areas for improvement was not in place, which meant incidents and accidents were not used as learning tools. 

A spokeswoman for the care home said: "We have already made significant improvements since the inspection took place early December and have been working to an action plan in conjunction with the Care Quality Commission, the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and Bracknell Forest Council.

"We consider the safety and well-being of our residents as our primary concern, furthermore, all major concerns have been addressed and we consider that none of the residents are at any significant risk.

"We have made three senior level appointments to focus on quality of care and compliances. The deputy home manager, who is also an NVQ assessor, has been tasked with assessing all of the care staff with a view to improving the levels of care through the use of a continuous training programme. Further to this, the newly appointed care services manager will be observing and monitoring the care on a daily basis.

"The standards of cleanliness are closely monitored by our new housekeeper, with particular attention to good practice and stricter guidelines within infection control. The deputy home manager has also taken responsibility over the record keeping and all of the care plans with risk assessments are being updated and reviewed.

"We are keeping regular contact with all of the residents and relatives to update them of the ongoing progress with improving care standards and encouraging their feedback and suggestions. We have also engaged a specialist consultancy advisory service to objectively monitor our action plan to ensure improvements are escalated and CQC compliances are met with urgency.

"The care industry itself is facing tough times, especially in relation to recruitment. There is a national shortage of trained staff, caused in large part by government policies restricting work permits for trained nurses outside of the EU, which ultimately causes an adverse effect and an acute shortage.

"Also, for any employer that does have a sponsorship licence to recruit staff from outside the EU, there are increased government conditions making it more difficult to recruit suitably trained staff to deliver the care.

"The new CQC fundamental standards are higher and more demanding than ever before and therefore the care industry is facing greater scrutiny and a much tougher inspection regime.

"However, given the new challenges, we have increased our human resource input and revised our systems and have developed a fully comprehensive capital expenditure programme."