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Improvement action plan for Portsoy's Durnhythe Care Home progressing


By Kyle Ritchie

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Councillors have heard about the progress made in the action plan to improve Portsoy's Durnhythe Care Home.

Concerns were raised following a visit by the Care Inspectorate last year, when the home was found to have issues with various elements of its service delivery.

This followed a similar outcome of an inspection in 2018.

Last July, in two of the criteria the council-run home was rated as weak and in the other three was assessed as adequate.

It particularly raised "significant concerns" with the management of medication and outlined that staff shortages were affecting the level of care.

This lead to an action plan being developed and then implemented.

In 2020, the care home has been visited by inspectors on two occasions, with one in July done virtually due to Covid restrictions.

An improvement action plan has been implemented at Durnhythe Care Home in Portsoy.
An improvement action plan has been implemented at Durnhythe Care Home in Portsoy.

In a report that went before the digital meeting of the Banff and Buchan area committee, council officer Fiona Stephen said: "The Care Inspectorate carried out a follow up visit to Durnhythe, an unannounced inspection on the week of February 17, 2020.

"The inspection report noted that significant progress had been made and improvements were acknowledged by the Care Inspectorate and the previous requirements made were considered to have been met.

"Durnhythe had an inspection on July 10, 2020. This also proved to be a positive inspection where comment was made on continued and further progress."

Improvements that were highlighted from the July visit included resident consultation, staff training and measures that had been introduced in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, the care home has also been visited on two occasions recently by a team of two health and social care partnership managers.

The report added: "All care homes have been visited in this way to provide support and to have an oversight on infection control procedures and ongoing resident support in care homes.

"On both visits, the outcome has been positive with Durnhythe evidencing good infection control procedures and resident care being observed as positive with a good homely and welcoming atmosphere within the home."

The improvement action plan has been updated to include these comments and will be submitted to the Integration Joint Board’s clinical and adult social care governance group for approval and ongoing monitoring.

The group implementing the plan will continue to meet over the next six months with a particular focus on embedding an improved system of ongoing self-evaluation at Durnhythe.

Troup councillor Ross Cassie asked at the meeting for assurance that over the next six months this action plan will continue to be looked at so that the care does not slip backwards again.

The officer said: "I would like to assure you we are meeting every two weeks and during those meetings we've got an action tracker so we are very carefully looking at where we are at, where we are going and what we have achieved. Alongside that we have a detailed service improvement plan.

"There is a lot of positive energy around continuing to improve Durnhythe. It was disappointing to see in terms of history how things have been.

"We have no intentions of turning back and excited about the improvements we are looking at."

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