We carried out a review of the data available to us about London Care (Queensbury) on 6 July 2023. We have not found evidence that we need to carry out an inspection or reassess our rating at this stage.
This could change at any time if we receive new information. We will continue to monitor data about this service.
If you have concerns about London Care (Queensbury), you can give feedback on this service.
London Care (Queensbury) is a domiciliary care agency which is providing personal care to people living in their own homes. At the time of our inspection London Care (Queensbury) was providing the regulated activity of personal care to 24 people. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
People told us the service provided person-centred care that met their needs. They told us care was delivered with kindness and respect. People had been involved in the planning of their care. as were their relatives as appropriate. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice although improvements were needed in relation to associated records.
People told us they felt safe receiving the service and policies and systems were in place to help protect people from the risk of harm, abuse, and improper treatment. Risks had been identified to both those people that used the service, and staff. Medicines were administered following best practice.
People's nutritional and hydration needs were met. Care plans were detailed and individual to each person which helped staff deliver person-centred care. Regular reviews had taken place with people to ensure the service not only met their needs but that the quality was as expected.
People told us they felt engaged, involved with the service, and listened to. They told us they received a flexible and responsive service.
Staff told us they felt supported, and we saw that they had been safely recruited, appropriately inducted, and trained, and that their competency to perform their role, assessed. People told us they had confidence in the staff's abilities and that they treated them with compassion.
Systems were in place to oversee and assess the quality of the service and the registered manager understood their regulatory responsibilities.
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 last rating for this service was good (published 14 February 2018)
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.
The inspection took place on 16 January 2018. We told the provider two working days before our visit that we would be coming because the location provides a domiciliary care service for people in their own homes and staff might be out visiting people.
This was the first inspection of the service since it was registered in June 2017. The service had previously operated from another postal address. This service had been inspected in March 2016 and was rated Good.
London Care (Brentford) is registered to provide personal care to people living in their own homes. At the time of the inspection 181 people used the service. They lived in the London boroughs of Ealing, Hounslow and Brent. The majority of people were older people, and some lived with the experience of dementia. A small amount of younger adults with physical disabilities, people with learning disabilities and people with mental health needs used the service. London Care (Brentford) is a branch of London Care Limited, a provider of 22 homecare services in London and South East England. The provider is part of the City and County Healthcare Group who own and manage a number of care providers.
The registered manager left the organisation in 2017. A new manager had been recruited and they had started the process of applying to be registered with the Care Quality Commission. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
People using the service and their representatives were generally happy. They liked the regular care workers who supported them and they felt their needs were being met. People told us the care workers were kind, considerate and friendly. Some people felt that visits did not always take place at the time they expected. Whilst some people said they did not mind a degree of flexibility, others felt that the care visits were sometimes so late that it disrupted their day and how they would like to be cared for. Most people explained that late visits were not a regular occurrence. People also told us they were not always informed when their care worker was running late so they did not know what was happening. We discussed this with the manager at the service and looked at the systems the provider had for monitoring when visits were planned and took place. The system had improved in recent months and the provider had an effective process for identifying and responding when visits did not take place as planned.
People told us they were involved in planning their own care. They said that their choices were respected and that the care was delivered in a way which supported them to stay as independent as they wanted. We saw that assessments of needs and care plans were clear and well designed. People had consented to their plans where they were able. For people who did not have capacity to consent, the provider had made sure that care was planned in their best interests with their representatives. The care plans included information about individual preferences and had been updated when people's needs changed.
The care workers who we spoke with gave us mixed feedback on their experiences working for the agency. Some care workers told us they did not always feel supported or have the training they needed. They also told us they were not allocated enough travel time between care visits. We looked at records of staff training, supervision and support. There was evidence that the staff had regular and thorough training and that they had opportunities to meet with their manager to discuss their work. The provider also carried out regular spot checks to observe how the care workers were supporting people and assessed their competencies with key tasks.
The provider had processes designed to keep people safe and help protect them from abuse. The risks each person was exposed to had been assessed and planned for. People received their medicines safely and as prescribed. The staff were aware of how to recognise and report abuse and had responded appropriately in instances where they had been concerned about someone's wellbeing. The provider had a contingency plan for different emergency situations and the staff knew how to respond in order to make sure people were safely cared for.
People using the service, their representatives and the staff were able to feedback their views and opinions about the service. The provider regularly asked people for this feedback. Complaints were appropriately investigated. There was evidence the provider had learnt from these and made changes which reflected best practice and how people wanted to be cared for. The provider worked closely with the local commissioning authorities and had responded to requests from them for changes. They also had their own systems for auditing the service. We saw that these were effective.