West Cliff Hall care home in Hampshire gets formal warning over faulty call bell system

6:30am Monday 18th February 2013 in News Photograph of the Author By Chris Yandell, Chief Reporter, New Forest

West Cliff Hall care home in Hythe West Cliff Hall care home in Hythe

A HAMPSHIRE care home was given a formal warning after inspectors found that the call bell system was faulty.

Staff from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) visited West Cliff Hall in Hythe and ruled that residents were in danger of not receiving the necessary care and support.

Balcombe Care Homes, which runs the establishment, was issued with a warning notice and told to make urgent improvements.

A Balcombe spokesman has told the Daily Echo that the problem has been fixed.

The CQC, which regulates the care home industry, made an unannounced visit to West Cliff Hall in December.

A CQC spokesman said: “We found that the home was failing to protect people living with them from the risk associated with unsafe equipment. The call bell system in the home was not working properly, despite previous attempts to fix it. This put people at risk of not receiving care and support when they requested it.”

Ian Biggs, the CQC’s deputy director in the south, said inspectors will return in the near future to carry out another unannounced inspection.

The equipment has already been repaired and is now fully operational, according to a statement on Balcombe’s website.

It says: “Balcombe Care Homes was issued with a formal warning because on the day of the inspection the call bell system was not operating properly.

“All necessary measures were put in place to safeguard residents from potential harm.”

Comments(3)

bazzeroz says...
11:39am Mon 18 Feb 13

They're cash machines not, care homes ffs! Why have a call system when you can ignore them all the time anyway!

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free121 says...
10:59pm Mon 18 Feb 13

Daily echo what a joke, if you looked into this then you would of found that cqc have found more worrying things wrong in the home!!!!!!!

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myopinion1012 says...
7:01am Thu 28 Feb 13

It is so annoying when care homes are slated for the things they do wrong. Where are all the good comments of all the good work that is done by the members of staff. They work very hard under enormous pressure for very little pay (keep in mind most carers are paid considerably less then a shelf stacker in a supermarket and what responsibility do they have, a tin might fall on someone's toe), not that someones well being is in their hands. So please why not write a report on all the good work that is done to make these peoples lives more comfortable. As for the comment about ignoring bells, my god what to you take carers for? In this instance the system is monitored by a computer system that can produce a printout of how long it takes for a bell to be answered. As for ignoring it that is a total joke. As a carer I dont not do the job to put people at risk I do it because, as the job title says I CARE. Yes they maybe the one or two people that give the job title a bad name, is this not the case in many jobs, but the majority do care and do the job above and beyond what is required of them. It's about time people looked at all the good that is done!

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