BANES Council leader rejects calls to resign over poor care home inspection
Residents at the home were found with unexplained bruising, with one left overnight sat in urine
Last updated 21st Dec 2022
The leader of Bath and North East Somerset (BANES) Council has dismissed calls to resign, as a damning report reveals the terrible state of a council run care home.
A report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) says residents were found with unexplained bruising, one hadn't eaten for days and another was left sat in urine overnight, during a recent inspection.
It was concluded that residents had suffered "avoidable harm", with the home placed in special measures.
It has led Conservative opposition councillors to call for both Council leader Kevin Guy and cabinet member for adult social care services Alison Born, to quit.
Leader of the Conservative group on the council, Vic Pritchard, said: “My heart goes out to all the residents of Charlton House and their families, who must be desperately upset to hear how their loved ones have been treated.
“The findings of this harrowing CQC report are extremely distressing.
"It is simply unacceptable that such poor levels of care are being administered at Charlton House, and I hope big improvements are made as a matter of urgency.”
The care home has been run by the council since 2020, when previous operator Sirona handed it and two other care homes back to the council after a months-long industrial dispute with staff.
Mr Pritchard said: “If the Liberal Democrat administration still intends to bring social care services back in-house at a time when we are experiencing raging inflation, a cost-of-living crisis and the difficulties of hospital discharges, we need immediate reassurance that the horrors we have found at Charlton House are not replicated elsewhere.
“To make matters worse, inspectors who visited Charlton House earlier this year asked for improvements to be made.
"Not only have these failed to materialise, but the service has deteriorated.
“Charlton House is owned by the council.
"The leader of the council and cabinet member for adult services, therefore, are directly responsible for ensuring the residents are properly cared for.
"On this, they have failed catastrophically and must resign immediately.”
Alison Born, who shares the role of cabinet member for adult services and council house building, says it's been clear "from the start" that the service needs investment.
"The council has responded by increasing management and leadership capacity, investing in staff training, increasing pay and upgrading the estate to raise standards," she said.
“However, this work has been taking place against the backdrop of the pandemic and Brexit, both of which have had a huge impact on the number of staff available to work in social care.
"While we have taken measures to improve recruitment such as our local “Proud to Care” campaign, innovative work with the RUH and through the creation of a specialist social care recruitment post, we remain more reliant on the use of agency staff than we would choose.
“As part of the post pandemic recovery of the local health and care system, we had repurposed some beds at Charlton House as Discharge to Assess (DtoA) beds to help improve the flow of patients from the RUH and had to use agency staff to maintain that capacity.
"These DtoA beds placed additional pressure on the service at Charlton House as it was managing more turnover and more complexity of needs.
"More capacity was put in to support the additional work but the team was also struggling to recruit to permanent leadership posts in the service.”
Born added that safeguarding alerts that prompted the inspection came from their own staff who recognised there were problems.
She says bed numbers have now been reduced to match staffing capacity.
Council leader Guy says councillor Born and the whole adult social care team "are doing a great job" during tough financial times.
"The fact that these issues were raised internally by the council’s own checks and balances proves the system works and these concerns are being addressed," he said.
“Unlike the Tories, we Liberal Democrats do not sweep problems under the carpet; we deal with them openly.
"Next May, local voters have a clear choice when it comes to adult social care.
“My simple message is do not trust the Tories with our care system.”
The CQC will inspect the care home again after six months to see if it has demonstrated improvement.