Burney House, Office K

Updated 4 August 2021

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by one inspector and an Expert by Experience. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

Service and service type

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes.

The service had a registered manager. This means that they are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection

Our inspection was announced. We gave the service notice of the inspection. This was because it is a domiciliary care service and we needed to be sure that a member of the management team would be in the office to support us with the inspection. The registered manager was not available at the time of the inspection. We were supported by the provider’s nominated individual and the interim manager. The nominated individual is responsible for supervising the management of the service on behalf of the provider.

What we did before the inspection

The provider was not asked to complete a provider information return prior to this inspection. This is information we require providers to send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.

We reviewed the information we already held about this service. This included details of its registration, previous inspection reports and any notifications of significant incidents the provider had sent us. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with the nominated individual and interim manager. We reviewed five care plans, which included risk assessments and four staff files, which included pre-employment checks.

After the inspection

We continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence we found such as risk assessments and policies. We also spoke to four care staff, six relatives of people that used the service and one person. We also contacted professionals that worked with the service for feedback.

Updated 4 August 2021

About the service

This service is a domiciliary care agency and is based in the London Borough of Havering. Burney House, Office K provides 24-hour live-in care and support to younger adults and older people living in their own homes.

At the time of the inspection, the service was supporting 17 people.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

A medicine support plan was in place for each person, which included information on how to support them with medicines. However, we found accurate records of medicine administration had not been kept. Audits had not identified the shortfalls we found with medicine records. We made a recommendation in this area.

Robust quality monitoring systems were not in place. Feedback through telephone monitoring was not being recorded to ensure continuous improvements were being made to improve care.

Risk assessments had been carried out to ensure people received safe care. Pre-employment checks such as references had been sought to ensure staff were suitable to support people. Systems were in place to monitor staff time-keeping and prevent infections.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection and update

The previous rating for this service was Good (published 6 March 2019).

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to staff approach and communication. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.

The overall rating for the service has remained the same. This is based on the findings at this inspection.

We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvement. Please see the well-led section of this report.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘Burney House, Office K on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.