AN ANDOVER disability charity has received a damning report which reveals a resident’s claim of waiting for 45 minutes for emergency assistance.

Enham Trust Care Home Services received an unannounced inspection from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) last month.

The inspection covered the charity’s three care homes, Michael, Elizabeth and William Houses.

On the charity website, it said residential care prices start from £710.73 per week.

This includes accommodation, food and up to 15 hours per week personal care.

The last inspected was three years ago and met regulations.

In this report, it received an overall rating of ‘requires improvement’.

Three aspects received ‘requires improvement’ – safety, effectiveness and how well-led the service is.

The report stated: “People were not always safe. The call bell system used to alert staff when people required assistance placed people at significant risk of harm.”

It added one person pulled the buzzer and it took 45 minutes for help to come after staff heard them ‘shouting for help’.

The resident said this had happened more than once.

The report indicated this was the fault of the buzzers, not the staff.

According to the report a staff member told them that “sometimes we don’t even have enough buzzers for the staff.”

Another aspect of the report stated: “One person told us their heating didn’t work properly and said: ‘I am cold at night’.”

Other maintenance issues included exposed electrical wiring, visible piping and no hot water.

However, the CQC report praised the quality of the staff.

It stated: “Staff responded effectively to ensure people’s freedom was not lawfully restricted without authorisation.”

Both the service’s caring and responsive aspects received a ‘good’.

A spokesperson for Enham Trust said: “We were delighted that the inspector was happy with the standard of care we provide to our care home residents, and in his verbal feedback said that he would be happy for one of his loved ones to be cared for in one of our care homes.

“In addition to the immediate actions we have improved the processes around checking the system, putting in weekly monitoring; the responsiveness of the staff team, and have ordered additional pagers to alert staff.”

The charity said it repaired a faulty call bell in one of the rooms during the inspection.

It also added it had put in place a programme of works for additional maintenance jobs, saying: “It is testament to the staff within our care homes that the report highlighted their kind, compassionate and respectful nature and that our clients feel safe.

“Overall we thought the report reflected the excellent job our care teams do; and we will continue to work with the people we support and their families to improve the quality of service we provide to our residents.”