Merle Boddy House

The following is CQC's published account of its assessment, published 29 January 2025. References to “we” mean CQC. It describes findings at that time.

We completed assessment visits to Merle Boddy House on 22 and 24 October 2024. This is a service for people with a learning disability and autistic people, 8 people were living at the service. People did not receive personalised care and were not protected from the risk of harm and abuse. People’s individual risk histories were not well managed or reflected in their care records, with a lack of mitigation in place. There was a lack of provider oversight at the service, and no monitoring arrangements in place where people experienced conditions such as constipation, placing their health at risk. Staff had not received specialist training to ensure they could best support people living with dementia. Improvements to reporting processes were needed to protect people following accidents and incidents. At our last assessment completed in 2019, the service was rated as requires improvement with breaches of the regulations. At this assessment, we have identified 4 breaches of the regulations, for person-centred care, safe care and treatment, safeguarding and good governance. We have assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. In instances where CQC have decided to take civil or criminal enforcement action against a provider, we will publish this information on our website after any representations and/ or appeals have been concluded. This service is being placed into special measures. The purpose of special measures is to ensure that services providing inadequate care make significant improvements. Special measures provide a framework within which we user our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a time frame within which providers must improve the quality of the care they provide.