A CARE home that was told to improve its services has failed to better itself after a second visit from the Care Quality Commission in less than a year.

Abbeycroft Residential Care Home in Rossendale was rated as ‘requires improvement’ at its inspection in January but when inspectors re-visited the Burnley Road facility in July this year, they told staff in their report they had not been satisfied sufficient improvements had been made.

CQC officials said: “The last rating for this service was ‘requires improvement’.

“There were two breaches of the regulations, including the failure to establish effective systems to monitor the quality of the service and a failure to undertake robust audits.

“The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection, which showed what they would do and by when to improve.

“However we received concerns in relation to safe care and treatment, moving and handling techniques and management oversight of the service.

“As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of ‘safe and well-led only’.”

Despite finding subtle improvements in the ‘safe’ area, which meant the care home was no longer breaching any of the regulations, it was not enough to bump their rating up to ‘good’.

The report added: “The overall rating for the service has remained as ‘requires improvement’, as there was no registered manager at the service, which means the rating for the ‘well-led’ domain could not be higher than ‘requires improvement’. In addition, we needed more time to be confident the improvements made had been fully embedded and sustained.”

The most recent inspection found that leaders and the culture they created had not been sufficiently embedded to support the consistent delivery of high-quality, person-centred care.

And prior to the inspection the CQC had received concerns about the use of inappropriate moving and handling techniques.

The report continued: “The provider acknowledged there had been an incident where incorrect techniques had been used which had led to distress for one person.

“The provider and local authority safeguarding team had investigated this and we were assured plans had been put in place to avoid this happening again.”

Abbeycroft, which cares for adults over the age of 65, was rated ‘good’ in two key areas of ‘safe’ and ‘caring’, but still requires improvements in the ‘effective’, ‘responsive’ and ‘well-led’ areas.

They will be reinspected in due course.