Chapel Garth EMI Residential Home

The following is CQC's published account of its assessment, published 5 January 2026. References to “we” mean CQC. It describes findings at that time.

Date of Assessment: 18 November to 28 November 2025. Chapel Garth is a care home providing support for up to 34 people. At the time of our assessment there were 33 people using the service, some people were living with dementia. We carried out this assessment due to the age of the rating and because we had received some concerns about staffing, personal care and leadership. The last comprehensive assessment took place in May 2025, and the service was rated good overall with requires improvement in the effective key question. At this assessment the service has remained good, however some improvements were needed to improve the governance of the service. Therefore, the well led key question is rated requires improvement.

Risks associated with people's care were not always managed to keep people safe. Risk assessments in place were detailed but care and support did not always reflect them. Accident analysis needed to improve to ensure lessons were learnt to improve practice. People were safeguarded from the risk of abuse and staff received training to ensure appropriate actions were taken if any concerns were raised. There were sufficient staff available to meet people’s needs although staff needed to be deployed more effectively.

We carried out a tour of the home and found while the home was generally clean, there were some minor issues that required attention. These concerns were addressed following our assessment.

During the assessment we spent time observing staff interacting with people. We found some staff were caring and explained tasks they were completing, whilst others were task focused and did not always deliver care and support in a person-centred way.

Predominantly, people received their medicines as prescribed. However, we did raise some concerns regarding the lack of information to administer 1 medicine in a safe way, medicines maintaining an appropriate temperature when kept in the medicine trolley in the lounge and body maps were in place but not always used to identify where topical creams should be applied.

Following our site visit the provider and management team took appropriate actions to address our concerns, however, governance systems in place required review to ensure they were effective and identifying issues in a timely way. There was evidence of a closed culture developing within the service with staff feeling very comfortable and demonstrated that there were times when the service ran for them and not the people living there.The provider had recently recruited a new manager who was in the process of registering with CQC. The new manager had plans to improve the service.