Staff at an Edinburgh care home told inspectors they are “uncomfortable delivering care to people” due to lack of training, raising alarm bells for inspectors.
The Blackwood Care Edinburgh West Housing Support Service received a poor inspection from the Care Inspectorate, with both their leadership and staff team being rated as “weak”.
Strengths identified in the report were “compromised by significant weaknesses,” resulting in the unsatisfactory rating in two categories.
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A spokesperson from Blackwood told Edinburgh Live said they “regret that several customers may not have received the standard of care they rightly deserve from Blackwood” and they have taken steps to improve their services in the weeks following the report.
Blackwood Homes and Care provides housing, care and support for disabled people to live independently in over 1700 homes across the 29 mainland local authorities in Scotland. A report published on May 19 outlined “historic” culture of poor “professional boundaries” at the charity’s Edinburgh West Housing Support Service.
The report stated: “We were made aware when speaking to some staff they were uncomfortable delivering personal care to people. This was because they lacked meaningful training and shadowing opportunities, to feel fully equipped to meet the care needs of people using the service.
“This gave us cause for concern as the care provider was not able to fully deliver the service agreed with people. Whilst management were exploring ways to overcome this, we felt this should have been planned and delivered ahead of time to avoid it impacting anyone negatively.”
The report also pointed a “historic” culture within the service that had the potential to “negatively impact people” such as “creating unhealthy dependences and professional boundaries” and “not adhering to the code of practice issued by the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC).”
Leadership was singled out as an area for improvement with inspectors finding that “management oversight of the service was insufficient”.
The Care Inspectorate identified an absence of meaningful supervision, observation, leadership, and organisation of care delivered to clients.
The report added: “The manager was not fully engaged nor knowledgeable about what was happening, and staff told us that they wanted to see a more visible management presence.”
Stengths of the service were also acknowledged by inspectors. Blackwood was rated “adequate” in its ability to support people’s wellbeing and the report stated that most people the inspectors spoke to “praised” the quality of the staff.
One client shared: “My one to one time with staff is very important to me. It enables me to go out and do things in the community and engage with my friends. I have a good relationship with the staff.”
A spokesperson for Blackwood said: “Following a recent Care Inspectorate inspection at our Edinburgh West service, Blackwood has already taken a number of steps over the last three weeks to address these findings and strengthen our service.
“We regret that several customers may not have received the standard of care they rightly deserve from Blackwood. This falls below our usual high standards of care and support which Blackwood provides in communities across Scotland.”
“We will learn important lessons from the inspection report and improvements to the management of that part of our service and new quality assurance procedures are already now in place.”
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