Special measures nursing home makes improvements

A nursing home described as foul-smelling as it was placed in special measures last year has seen some improvement, a watchdog says.

Parkhill Nursing Home in Stalybridge was branded inadequate by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in November 2024. A follow up inspection was conducted in August as part of the healthcare body’s ongoing enforcement action against the provider for eight continued breaches of regulation.

The CQC claims improvements in the four areas of person-centred care; consent; safe care and treatment; and nutrition and hydration.

The facility, on Huddersfield Road in Millbrook, was not washing residents properly and treated them in an ‘undignified and degrading’ manner, last year’s scathing inspection report found. The home was visited in July 2024 due to ‘numerous concerns which had been raised about the service, including safeguarding concerns and concerns around staffing and management arrangements’.

Despite the home making progress on their regulation breaches, it still requires improvement. The CQC rated the facility as requiring improvement in the categories of  safe; effective; caring; and responsive, but rated them as inadequate still in the ‘well-led’ category.

The latest inspection report, published last month, did highlight how staff were ‘generally kind and caring’ but people’s needs were not always being met in a timely manner. Staff shortages were seen as the reason for this issue by the inspectors and residents of the home.

The service did make sure that medicines and treatments were safe and met people’s needs, capacities and preferences and they involved people in medicine planning, inspectors added.

The October inspection report read: “We found continued breaches of four legal regulations in relation to dignity and respect, premises and equipment, good governance and safe staffing.

“The service has been in a Multi-Agency Concerns (MAC) process led by the local authority for over a year and is voluntarily restricting admissions to the home. 

“Parkhill Nursing Home has now been rated inadequate or requires improvement for the last four inspections. 

“This meant there was a history of failing to respond adequately to serious concerns raised by CQC.

“The lack of appropriate staffing levels impacted on people’s safety and the effectiveness of care delivery. 

“People were not always treated with dignity and did not always receive timely attention when they required personal care and people were not assisted with personal grooming as often as they would like.”

Parkhill Nursing Home has been contacted for comment.