The Croft Achieves ‘Good’ CQC Rating Despite Ongoing Sector Pressures
Latest CQC Report for The Croft a Source of Pride for The Team
The team at The Croft Residential Home are celebrating after their latest Care Quality Commission (CQC) Inspection resulted in a Good Rating and a report which included only positive comments about the home.
This was a particular achievement when over 50% of the specialist dementia care homes inspected in England in 2022 were rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate. “We are very proud of the improvements made by the whole team over the last 18 months since our last inspection, which have resulted in a Good Rating and what we consider to be a glowing CQC report” said Simon Spiller, co-owner and provider at The Croft.
Pressures on care homes offering dementia care are particularly acute, especially the continued impacts of the social care staffing crisis and chronic under-funding of dementia care. “It’s very difficult to recruit staff with the aptitude and skill to care for people with dementia. Our manager, Ellie, has done a great job of retaining, motivating and training our experienced care team, resulting in an overall improvement in our dementia care standards which has rightly been recognised by the CQC” added Simon.
Ongoing concerns about the government’s under-funding of dementia care continue to be raised by social care leaders. Martin Green, the Chief Executive of Care England, which represents large private care operators, says “Local authority funding is working out at just £4 an hour to provide 24-hour care, three meals a day, making sure people have their drug regime and managing challenging behaviour.”
Regrettably, other dementia homes have succumbed to these funding and staffing pressures. The proportion of care homes in England offering dementia services branded Inadequate by the CQC more than tripled from 2% to 9% between 2019 and 2022, while the percentage found to be Good or Outstanding fell from 71% to 49%. This decline in standards in the sector appears to be a direct result of homes having insufficient staffing, or having to over rely on inexperienced staff and agency staff who are insufficiently skilled at supporting the very complex care needs of people suffering with dementia.
“In this context, we take some consolation in the fact that The Croft has been able to buck the trend as a consequence of the strong excellent management and the commitment of our team. But, we are not taking this for granted. We won’t yet see much light at the end of the tunnel until we know when the £7.5B of extra funding promised to social care in the Government’s Autumn Statement actually starts to arrive” explained Simon.