The inspection visits took place on 29 November and 04 December 2017. The first day was an unannounced visit, the second day was announced to enable us to speak with the manager and review documents.

The service is required to have a registered manager in place. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run. At the time of our inspection the registered provider had not completed the process to replace the previous registered manager who had left the service in March 2017. This is a breach of Section 33 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

In addition during the inspection we found another breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.

The service was transferred in its entirety to the current registered provider in December 2016. The last inspection report for the service operated by the former registered provider was published in January 2017 and rated the service as Requires Improvement overall. The current registered provider had access to the findings in the report and the identified areas for improvement for the service they had taken over. We found that the actions required to improve the service had not been fully implemented.

Aran Court Care Home is a service registered to accommodate up to 86 adults who require assistance with personal care or require nursing care. At the time of our inspection visit 56 people were being accommodated, the majority of whom were living with dementia or physical disabilities. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care as a single package under one contractual agreement. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

Aran Court Care Home is divided into three separate units, one of which is used for people primarily living with dementia. Prior to our visit the provider had closed one of the nursing units due to difficulties in recruiting suitable nursing staff. The care home is adjacent to another of the provider’s services and shares the kitchen and laundry facilities with it.

At this inspection we found

People felt secure and safe with their regular care workers and nursing staff.

People had risk assessments in place to identify and reduce the risk of harm; however these did not always reflect the current risks for people and potentially placed people at the risk of harm.

People were able to have their needs met on most occasions by care workers and nursing staff that had developed personal knowledge of them. However people were concerned that agency workers engaged by the provider did not have sufficient knowledge of their care needs.

The provider had recruitment procedures for the safe employment of care workers and nursing staff with processes which ensured they received the necessary induction and training to meet the care needs of people living at the service.

People were supported and received their medicines from specialist care workers and nursing staff who were trained and subject to regular competency checks.

The provider had failed to consistently comply with the legal requirements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and associated guidance. This was a breach of Regulation 11(1) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives, and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service support this practice.

People’s ability to be involved in activities was sometimes limited by the support available.

People were