A mental health home that cares for children and adolescents has been told to improve for a second consecutive time following a focused inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

An overall rating of 'requires improvement' was handed to The Lighthouse in Darwen in January, although inspectors found the 'safe' area to be 'inadequate' as there were large gaps in the services provision which mean the home was unsafe for children.

As a result, the CQC served The Lighthouse with a warning notice and told staff they would need to make improvements by March 4.

The report, published on January 26 stated: "At the last inspection, we rated safe as inadequate due to concerns about staff not being trained in restraint, not having enough staff to safely restrain children, there was no nurse call alarm system, disclosure and barring service checks were not completed prior to employment, positive behaviour support plans were not based on functional assessments and contained negative punishment strategies, and not all incidents involving the police were reported to the Care Quality Commission."

The inspection, on November 17 last year was undertaken to see if the service had made the required improvements following the previous inspection in March 2021.

The other key areas were not inspected and the ratings for those remained the same.

The inspection found that the service was not safe for children as it didn't have enough nursing and support staff to keep patients safe.

From September 1 2021 to November 30 2021, there were 102 shifts where there were not three staff for a whole shift or a substantial period of time out of 182 shifts.

Not all police incidents were notified to the CQC and there were ten instances where the service needed to contact the police for support with a child between May 21 2021 and July 28 2021.

Six of those incidents were not reported to the CQC. This included two incidents of reporting a child missing and four incidents of reporting assault on staff and aggressive behaviour.

Staff were also required to support a child in another property (an annexe –but considered as part of the Lighthouse) across the road, which meant staffing ratios in both buildings were unsafe.

There was a high risk of children being exposed to avoidable harm and there were not enough staff to safely support children during incidents of restraint.

If a child required two members of staff to support them, there was often not a third member of staff to care for the other children.

The report went on: "Due to our concerns and the need for the provider to make significant improvement we served a warning notice.

"This requires the provider to ensure there are sufficient numbers of staff to safely manage an incident that may require physical intervention with a child."

This service had been inspected on two previous occasions and at the last inspection requirement notices were issued in relation to breaches of regulations, which included using negative punishment strategies, no training in restraint, and the failure to ensure a call system was in place should children need assistance.

All of these areas had seen improvements, however staffing levels were still a concern and inspectors were concerned about the audibility of the alarm system.

The CQC told The Lighthouse that they must ensure there are enough competent and trained staff available on each shift to keep children safe, and they must ensure that all police incidents are reported to the CQC.

They were also told to make sure there were clear policies and procedures in place for the admittance of youngsters who were aged 18 after an 18-year-old, who had previously been a patient of The Lighthouse, had been admitted for two nights as part of a crisis prevention plan, as inspectors were not assured that the safety of the other children had been considered.

A spokesperson for Associated Wellbeing which runs The Lighthouse said: "Since the report the service has gone through a company restructure.

"New directors have taken over the running of the company, the Lighthouse has a new registered manager and a new staff team who are absolutely committed to improving the CQC rating for the young people who use our service."