A SALISBURY care home which looks after people with mental health conditions has been told by the care watchdog that it must improve.

Wilton Road care home, run by Rethink Mental Illness, was visited in September in an unannounced inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) with the home rated as ‘requires improvement’ in a report published earlier this month.

The home was rated as ‘good’ for being safe, effective and caring while ‘requiring improvement’ in the responsive and well-led categories.

Inspectors recognised that staff demonstrated good knowledge and the friendly nature of the home between residents, relatives and staff but concerns were raised about the lack of monitoring and medicine checks.

The report said: “We were told that people met with staff on a monthly basis to discuss their care and support and go through goals which they had set. We reviewed these and found that they were not all up to date and that some were not relevant to people anymore.”

Inspectors also highlighted that as the manager of the home splits her time with another location regular management monitoring systems were not fully established.

“We reviewed the monthly task sheets which listed staff checks and management audits. We found that between June and August 2017 the manager's finance, medicines, people's files and daily/weekly/monthly checks had not been completed or signed off. As a result of the manager's medicine audits not being completed we found that temperature checks were not being recorded in the medicine cabinet."

In one instance inspectors found that a medicine bottle did not have a date recorded for when it was opened but staff said that would be addressed.

CQC inspectors found that the seven people living at the home at the time were given choice, and staff respected their privacy and dignity, which, assessors said, demonstrated that staff were knowledgeable of people's needs.

Wilton Road is a care home for up to eight people who have enduring mental health problems.

A resident at the home said: “I can make my own choices within reason and the staff help me to make informed choices. When I go to appointments staff accompany me and give me reassurance when I need it.”

A spokesman for Rethink Mental Illness said: “Rethink Mental Illness is committed to ensuring people using our services receive first rate care. We are acting on the report by the Care Quality Commission. We are pleased that the service was judged ‘safe’, ‘caring’ and ‘effective’, however we acknowledge that changes are  needed for it to be judged ‘responsive’ and ‘well-led’.

“We have implemented an action plan to make improvements in the areas identified. We will ensure we can deliver a service that is responsive to residents’ needs. Our Quality Assurance Team are also currently providing the service with additional support. We fully expect this to be reflected in future reports”