Care home
A 28-bed care home in Sowerwick
Two floors of bedrooms, a chair holding a door open and a laundry trolley left where the corridor narrows.
Town
Sowerwick
Floors
2
Floor area
1,650 m²
Occupancy
28 residents, 12 staff on the day shift
Assessed
Review date
What we found
Three findings, marked on the photograph.
1
Chair holds door open
Act now
Take the chair away and fit a hold-open that releases when the alarm sounds.
2
Trolley blocks corridor
Within a month
Mark a trolley bay off the route and keep trolleys in it.
3
Linen cupboard left open
Within three months
Keep the cupboard door shut and take surplus linen out of the cupboard.
What changed
The same place after the work.
The door is held by a unit that lets go when the alarm sounds, and the trolley has a marked bay off the route.
The home has twenty-eight bedrooms across two floors and a staff team that knows every resident by habit as well as by name. That knowledge shaped what we found.
Doors were held open with chairs because residents like to see the corridor and staff like to hear a call. The reasons were kind. The risk was that a door open by habit is not a door that shuts in a fire.
The laundry trolley was the second problem. It was parked where the corridor turns, which is where two staff with a wheelchair need the full width. The linen cupboard held more than it was meant to and was left open between rounds.
The manager, who took the report to her night staff first, said the wall units were the best change because nobody had to remember anything. The trolley bay was marked by lunchtime.
Because people sleep here, the review date comes sooner than it would in an office. We have the visit in the diary and we will bring the same photographs.
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