This announced inspection took place on 13 and 22 November 2018.

Beaumont House provides care and support to people living in specialist 'extra care' housing. The property consists of individual rented flats in a shared building in Walton-on-the-Naze, close to local amenities and public transport. Care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for extra care housing as the flats are people's own homes; this inspection looked at people's personal care and support service. People were able to purchase lunch in a communal dining room and take part in social activities. We did not inspect the provision of meals or activities.

CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with 'personal care'; which includes help with tasks such as support with personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided. There were 61 flats at the property. At the time of our inspection, 52 flats were occupied and 52 people received personal care.

This was the first inspection of this service since the provider One Housing Group Limited registered with us to provide personal care at Beaumont House in 15 June 2017.

There was a registered manager at the service. 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. There was also a general manager who had overall responsibility for the service, including the accommodation. During this report we referred to the general manager and registered manager as the ‘management team’.

The registered manager and general manager had not clearly defined their roles and responsibilities. As a result, the overall communication and management of the service was not well coordinated and consistent. The provider had not effectively addressed these concerns at our inspection, however improvements were being introduced to resolve the issues we found.

There were a number of checks and audits on the quality and safety of the service. Whilst these had not addressed the key issues with the management of the service, the audits were detailed and were driving improvements in areas such as medicine administration and training.

When we gathered feedback about the service, everyone we spoke to was enthusiastic about the care staff provided. There was room for improvement in how the provider and management team communicated with key individuals and groups. People, families and staff told us they did not find the culture open and the registered manager and provider had not consistently gathered their feedback about the running of the service. Feedback from external professionals was also mixed, and was affected by the issues we found within the management of the service.

The provider and management team had plans in place to improve the safety of the people using the service, in particular to improve the support people received with their medicines and to focus on recruiting more staff. Whilst the measures to reduce medicine errors were not yet fully effective, skills and audits were slowly improving in this area. There was clear and detailed guidance to staff on the support people needed with their medicines.

There were enough staff to keep people safe however recruitment and retention of staff was an ongoing issue at the service. Agency staff were in use whilst the provider focused on increasing the staff team. Improvements were needed to ensure the registered manager had better oversight of the recruitment process.

Senior staff provided care staff with guidance outlining areas of individual risk. Staff raised concerns about people’s safety where necessary and worked well with the management team and external professionals