A troubled care home has been placed into special measures and rated inadequate by inspectors.

Following an unannounced visit in January, the Little Oyster Residential Home, The Leas, Minster, was described as "not safe" by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The Seaside Avenue care home, which cares for up to 64 people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities, mental health conditions and autism, was previously told it required improvement.

In December, owner Ernie Batten said there was a crisis at care homes around the country due to rising prices and predicted many could soon close. Despite this, it seemed to be one of few bucking the trend.

Now, in a quick turn of events, a report released this morning revealed staff weren't always giving residents their medicine despite a proper process being in place.

People living at the home were also not completely safe from harm or abuse, with the two inspectors saying incidents of physical abuse between two people at the service wasn't "appropriately identified, reported and dealt with".

Despite some small strides of improvement, standards had dropped elsewhere at the care home.

This is the second time in 17 months the home has been rated "inadequate".

It is now being closely monitored by the CQC and will be inspected in the future to assess whether the issues mentioned have been addressed.

Debbie Ivanova, CQC’s director for people with a learning disability and autism, said: “Following our previous inspection, we told it where it needed to improve to ensure people receive the quality of care they should expect as standard.

“We saw some small pockets of improvement, but there were more areas where standards had declined – which is why we’ve rated the service inadequate.

“A lack of oversight from senior leaders was behind most of the problems we saw, meaning they were unable to identify issues and develop solutions. This manifested itself in several ways.

“We saw that people weren’t supported to set or achieve goals, such as learning new skills, or helped to pursue their interests by staff. This is unacceptable.

“Staff didn’t always follow processes designed to keep people safe, such as those for medication – which meant some people didn’t receive their medication as required.

'If progress isn’t forthcoming, or if people are at immediate risk of harm, we won’t hesitate to take action to ensure people’s safety...'

“There were also other policies that weren’t always followed, including safeguarding to protect people from the risk of abuse.

“Following the inspection, we reported our findings to the service’s leaders. This means they know where there’s good practice on which they can build, and where there are issues that they must address.

“We’re monitoring the service closely and we’ll inspect it again to assess whether improvements have been made. If progress isn’t forthcoming, or if people are at immediate risk of harm, we won’t hesitate to take action to ensure people’s safety.”

Other findings from the visit revealed the service provided people with care and support in a clean and well-equipped environment and it was undergoing a programme of redecoration and repair.

Most staff had the necessary training and since the last inspection, people, their relatives and staff had been encouraged and supported to provide feedback about the service.

The care home was slammed in 2021 by Tarnia Harrison, whose brother Terry Raymond lived there until he died following a fall.

She claimed her brother's needs, both medically, physically and mentally, were not being met and she was "powerless to stop it".

An inquest into his death, held in Maidstone last year, found it was an accident.

An ambulance was called and he was taken to Medway Maritime Hospital, Gillingham.

Doctors could not find any serious injury at first, except for a graze to his head, and suspected he may have suffered a stroke. But a CT scan later found bleeding on his brain which was referred to as a non-survivable "catastrophic" head injury.

A spokesman for the care home said: "Whilst we accept the outcome of the CQCs inspection report, we are obviously disappointed in its decision.

"Little Oyster Residential Care Home has recently come under new management and we are committed to working closely with the CQC to ensure the necessary improvements are made.

"As proceedings with the CQC continue, we are unable to make any further comment."