The leader of Liverpool Council has said he is “deeply unhappy” with the findings of a social care report into an authority-run care home which has been placed into special measures. Brushwood House on South Parade has been deemed inadequate by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) after a series of failures were identified during a three-day inspection this summer.
Alongside Millvina House in Anfield, Brushwood opened in 2019 and was one of the first city council-built care homes for 25 years. The local authority took over the site in July 2024 after Southport-based Bloomcare indicated it would cease its operation.
Widespread and systemic concerns
Inspectors found “widespread and systemic concerns” affecting the quality, safety and governance of the service while opportunities to learn from incidents, complaints and safeguarding concerns were “frequently missed.” Cllr Liam Robinson, leader of Liverpool Council, said he would “unreservedly apologise” to residents, family and friends of all of those living at the home.
Bloomcare, which took over the homes when they were threatened with closure in 2021, indicated it no longer wished to run the homes and gave notice to end its contract. Last year, the council stepped in to provide nursing services directly after Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust indicated it could no longer do so beyond an initial six month contract.
Dirty baths, toilets and kitchen equipment
Brushwood House is a care home registered to provide nursing and personal care for up to 60 people. At the time of the assessment in July, 39 people were living at the home. Among the issues identified were dirty baths, toilets, falls mat, kitchen equipment, windowsills and furnishings. Kitchenettes on three units were visibly unclean, with accumulations of dirt, staining and food debris on appliances, walls, kickboards, bins and cleaning equipment.
Cllr Robinson said the inspection was triggered after the city’s new head of service “spotted a number of things at the home that were real triggers for concern and bad practice.” He added: “Quite rightfully, with everybody’s support across the council, he flagged that with CQC as the regulator, as we should do. That obviously led them to triggering the investigation and this report that they’ve published. I think from our perspective, clearly we’re deeply unhappy that this has happened and we unreservedly apologise to the residents of Brushwood, all of their family and friends and nearest and dearest, and by extension, the people of the city, because we took on the operation of this home, because it was already inadequate, and the previous provider had, in my opinion, run it badly.”
Improvement plan put in place
The city leader said there was a resolve to fix the problems laid bare by the report, which included a reliance on agency staff, some of whom didn’t know the names of the residents they were caring for. Cllr Robinson added how changes had been made to staffing with an improvement plan put in place.
He said: “I think one of the bits we’re keen to point out is that we are literally introducing lots of improvements and have been over the past few weeks already. We haven’t waited until this report has landed, to drive through further improvements, things like introducing more staffing, introducing a more rigorous training regime, making sure that we’ve got the right person can centre care plans for the residents in the home, and we’re absolutely resolved to make sure that we resolve this, and we fix this.”
Cllr Robinson said the local authority expected a similar inspection at Millvina House in Anfield as a result of the Brushwood findings. He said: “Obviously, I’m not going to speculate on exactly where this may end up, but clearly there’s a number of detailed investigations that we’re doing with people that we’re working within the homes and how that the management of that has worked as well. We take this extremely seriously so we’re working our way through that with all the rigour and detail.”
The Labour group leader added how he would not accept excuses as a family member and would not seek to offer any to those impacted. He said: “I think from our perspective, we’re absolutely focused on trying to get the best people. It doesn’t make it easy, doesn’t make it straightforward, but it doesn’t mean that any other things that you’ve read in that report are acceptable and we’re not going to hide behind any kind of system wide excuses behind all of that. I feel quite deeply that if I was one of the family members or friends of one of the residents, I wouldn’t accept excuses like that.”
