A HEALTH watchdog has slammed a Romsey care home for providing “inadequate” care.

It comes afterreports regarding “a number of concerns” over the care provided.

Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission, CQC, visited Willow Tree Homecare’s premises in Romsey over t a number of days and found a catalogue of problems with the care given.

Overall inspectors found the care home “inadequate” – the worst category of all – while in three other areas they declared the home was needing improvement.

Five breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 regulations were found and the authority is “considering the appropriate regulatory response” to resolve the problems found.

Management at the Love Lane care home have now been issued a warning after it was found they “did not have a sufficient number of qualified, competent, skilled and experienced staff deployed”.

In their report, inspectors said: “We found the provider had widespread shortfalls in the number of suitably skilled, qualified and experienced staff to meet people’s needs.”

When inspectors visited the care home at the end November and beginning of December inspectors found:

• There were a significant number of missed care calls which put people at risk of not receiving the care and support they needed.

• People were not always treated with dignity.

• People were not always supported to take their medicines safely.

• Documentation for the recording of medicines administered was not always in place.

• Staff were not always trained to administer medicines.

• Staff were unsure if they were performing effectively due to the lack of support and direction.

• Decisions made in people’s best interests were not assessed in line with the requirements of The Mental Capacity Act 2005.

However inspectors added: “Staff, people and relatives told us they were confident in the new management and felt the direction needed to make improvements was clearer.”

A spokesman from the care home said: “As a company committed to delivering care services of the highest possible standard, we at Willow Tree Homecare were naturally disappointed by the recent CQC report.

“The published findings reflected two key problems experienced during the period leading up to the inspection: maintaining a stable, competent management team and recruiting sufficient suitable care staff.

“Although we do know that many of the people that we support remain pleased with their service, we still have work to do to generate the improvements to the service that both we and the CQC recognise are required.

“We are very pleased to say that we have now appointed a new manager at the Romsey office, supported in turn by a newly-appointed regional manager experienced within the Hampshire area.

“We have every confidence that this new team, properly resourced, will continue to turn things around.

“We have developed an action plan for the CQC and the council to demonstrate how the necessary improvements will be made and maintained.”