A Hornchurch care home carrying a 'requires improvement' rating has bettered its offering, inspectors have found.

Ashgrove Residential Care Home on Billet Lane was inspected by Care Quality Commission (CQC) on July 4.

The visit was a "targeted inspection", which means it was made to check if there had been improvements with the concerns identified about Ashgrove's governance.

This means it still has the 'requires improvement' rating it received after an inspection in October 2021.

It was deemed 'requires improvement' across categories of being safe, effective, caring and responsive, but the well-led section was rated 'inadequate'.

In October the CQC inspector found “robust quality assurance systems were not in place to identify shortfalls we found with risk assessments, infection control, need for consent and staff training and support”.

But the July 4 inspection found improvements had been made, and "quality assurance systems were in place to identify shortfalls and take prompt actions to ensure people were safe”.

A spokesperson for the home said, since the October inspection, Ashgrove has “worked hard to implement improvement and address” shortfalls flagged.

After the October inspection, the CQC said the provider had failed to take “proper steps to ensure there were effective systems to assess, monitor and mitigate risks to the health and safety of people to improve the quality and safety of the services provided”.

In the recent report, however, it noted the inspector felt “assured” that Ashgrove was preventing and controlling infection.

An Ashgrove Residential Care Home spokesperson said: “Unfortunately, the CQC website entry for the home still states that CQC were not assured in relation to some issues of Infection prevention and control.

“However, this is because the CQC website has not been updated to reflect the findings of the most recent inspection on July 4 2022, and we have asked CQC to correct this error on its website.”

The home’s spokesperson said they are “pleased” the most recent inspection recognised improvements made and identified that “the home is compliant with each of the requirements it reviewed”.

Ashgrove has to wait until the next inspection for the overall rating of the home to be changed, the spokesperson said.