![\"Stock](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6_Nurse-image.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAmong the concerns were poor infection prevention practices<\/p>\n
Southend-on-Sea City Council have contacted hundreds who are owed money back(Image: Getty Images\/Jacobs Stock Photography Ltd)<\/p>\n
A care service in Essex has been placed into special measures after the health care watchdog found it was in breach of the way it operated.<\/p>\n
During the CQC inspections of Ronti Care Solutions Ltd – a domiciliary care agency providing care and support to people living in their own homes – was found to be in breach of legal regulations relating to safe care and treatment, staffing, fit and proper persons employed, and good governance.<\/p>\n
The Grays-based service was previously rated good but has now changed to inadequate following the inspections in April and May this year. Among the concerns were poor infection prevention practices – including failure to prevent cross contamination.<\/p>\n
One person told inspectors: \u201cI\u2019m getting frustrated with having to clean up after the carers.\u201d Concerns were also raised regarding a lack of care when handling waste, as another relative noted, \u201cSome of these carers are just so lazy that they won\u2019t even put the toilet seat up when they\u2019re emptying out the commode.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crucially, witnessed practices demonstrated that staff did not always understand or implement effective cross-contamination barriers. One relative shared a significant safety concern, explaining they once noticed that the carer had put on gloves to wash their relative.<\/p>\n
They said: \u201cBut care staff didn\u2019t change the gloves when they went into the kitchen straight after. So, the care staff was making food and tea with contaminated gloves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inspectors said these accounts \u201cindicate that staff were not consistently applying safe personal protective equipment protocols or maintaining hygienic practices, directly increasing the risk of cross-contamination and infectious spread within people’s homes\u201d.<\/p>\n
A statement from the CQC said: \u201cRisk management arrangements fell short of ensuring safety and lacked the robustness needed to fully protect people from harm. Systems to assess, plan for and mitigate individual health needs were inconsistent, ineffective and occasionally missing altogether. Consequently, those experiencing declining health did not always have their changing needs recognised or managed safely, which ultimately exposed them to a significant risk of avoidable harm.<\/p>\n
\u201cGaps in training, clinical knowledge and competence meant that care staff were not always fully prepared to support people safely and appropriately. Because of these gaps, the service could not provide sufficient assurance that its workforce received adequate training or possessed the necessary skills to manage care safely.<\/p>\n
\u201cWeaknesses in governance and oversight meant that the registered manager lacked a comprehensive understanding of service risks and people’s specific needs. Instead of using incident tracking as a tool for continuous learning and development, the service handled events without the evaluation required for genuine progress. This absence of critical review created an environment where unsafe habits could easily take root and continue without challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The service has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Among the concerns were poor infection prevention practices Southend-on-Sea City Council have contacted hundreds who are owed money…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1397,166762,102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-682605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-environment","tag-grays","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}