Residents 'not safe' at four-inquest care home

A care home that will close after admitting "shortcomings in care" and failures in leadership has been labelled "not safe" by inspectors.

The Elms in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire will shut later this month, and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found the service to be inadequate.

In May, the BBC first reported the concerns of relatives about The Elms after their loved ones died in 2019, weeks after a meeting in which worries were raised about "poor care".

Inquests into the deaths of the residents - George Lowlett, Margaret Canham and David Poole - remain ongoing. HC-One also apologised to the family of Joyce Parrott, who died in April 2020.

Inspectors found "people were not safe and were at risk of avoidable harm" and described multiple occasions when people had "not received their medicines as prescribed".

Other findings included:

• Staff had not referred all potential safeguarding events to the local authority
• A failure to "establish systems to ensure people were effectively safeguarded from abuse"
• The provider had failed to learn when things went wrong
• "Widespread and significant shortfalls" in leadership
• No reliable record of the staff that had worked at the home and a reliance upon agency staff, which "resulted in people not receiving consistent care"

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Source: BBC News, 5 October 2022