A care home in Bishopsteignton is to challenge a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report that has rated it inadequate for a second time and kept it in special measures.

Moors Park House says it ‘believes the rating of ‘inadequate’ is not appropriate and should instead be ‘requires improvement’. Managers at the home will request ‘a review of this rating’ and pointed out that ‘there have been questions of inconsistent ratings raised by others in the past’.

The care home has also accused the CQC of ‘behaving in an adversarial way with providers’ and warned that the impact of this on the mental health of care home managers could result in tragedy similar to the situation with Ofsted and school inspections.

The CQC conducted its latest inspection of Moors Park House between May 28 and July 15 this year to check managers were making improvements after the previous CQC inspection in 2023.

Although the rating for how effective the service is improved from ‘inadequate’ to ‘good’, all the other areas remained at their previous ratings. These were inadequate for the care home being safe and well-led and requires improvement for caring and responsive.

‘It was worrying to find that, despite some minor improvements, the same level of poor care remained at Moors Park since our last inspection,’ said CQC deputy director of operations in the south Catherine Campbell. ‘Leaders had still not taken enough action to address our serious concerns around the quality of care provided,’ she added.

The CQC’s main concerns included: a lack of consistency in measures to protect residents from abuse or risks to their health and safety; staff numbers; and inadequate systems to deal with complaints or learn from mistakes.

‘We have told leaders at Moors Park House where we expect to see immediate and significant improvement,’ Catherine said. ‘In the meantime, we will continue to monitor them closely to make sure people are safe while this happens and won’t hesitate to take further action if this doesn’t happen.’

Moors Park House argues that the care home has made huge progress in the last six months and that the report, based on an inspection that took place six months ago, ‘in no way reflects the way the service is currently’. It also points out that the CQC is well aware of the progress it has made as the CQC inspector has taken part in progress meetings as part of the quality support process run by Devon County Council.

In the summer, Moors Park House recruited an experienced turnaround consultant, who is also a registered nurse, as an interim manager. ‘Since that time the processes have been tightened up and at the most recent Devon County Council review meetings, which was also attended by the CQC inspector, the significant progress in quality monitoring was acknowledged, a spokesperson from the home said.

Moors Park also points out that residents and families were reporting general satisfaction with the service. The latest report states that ‘people and relatives told us staff treated them with kindness and compassion and felt they had good relationships with staff’.