Archived: Home Caring Services

Updated 10 April 2015

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This inspection took place across two days, on 20 November 2014 and 27 November 2014 and was unannounced.

The inspection team consisted of one Adult Social Care bank inspector who attended both days of the inspection, one Adult Social Care inspector who attended the second day of the inspection and another Adult Social Care bank inspector who made phone calls to people who used the service and staff, following the two inspection days. At the time of the inspection a Provider Information Return (PIR) was not available for this service. This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.

During our inspection, we spoke with three people who used the service, four relatives of people who used the service, five care staff, the registered manager and the registered provider. We reviewed records kept by the service.

We looked at the care records of nine people who used the service and the staff personnel records of thirteen staff members. The registered manager told us there were approximately 45 people who used the service and 45 staff members employed as care staff at the time of our inspection.

We looked at policies and procedures at the service and found the majority of these were inadequate or out of date. We spoke with the provider and registered manager about this, who told us they had recently bought a new ‘Domiciliary Care and Personalised Policies’ package. We saw evidence that these policies had been purchased six days prior to our inspection.

Updated 10 April 2015

We carried out this inspection over two days; 20 November 2014 and 27 November 2014. This was an unannounced inspection. At the last inspection in May 2014, the service was found to be not meeting the requirements of Regulation 20 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2010.

Home Caring Services provide care and support to people in their own homes. These services are provided within the Pontefract and Wakefield area.

It is a condition of registration that the provider has a registered manager at the service. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service and has the legal responsibility for meeting the requirements of the law; as does the provider. The registered manager was present on both days of our inspection.

There were no (or inadequate) audits carried out of medications, safeguarding logs and accident and incident logs. This meant it was not possible for the provider to identify potential problematic areas or themes in incidents. We did find, however, that safeguarding concerns were fully investigated at the service.

We found issues with training, where staff had not completed a training course or were overdue an update. We also found people were not involved in their care planning to enable the service to provide a more person-centred approach. We also spoke with staff about the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA). However, staff did not have sufficient knowledge in this area and told us they had not received training in the MCA.

Both staff and people who used the service confirmed they had positive, caring relationships with each other. People we spoke with told us they liked their carers and if there were concerns about staff interactions or interventions, they would report it for a resolve to be reached. We also asked people and staff about privacy and dignity. People confirmed their privacy and dignity were respected and staff were able to tell us how they ensured this. However, we found people had not been involved in their care planning, there was a lack of information regarding people’s life histories and no information had been given to people regarding advocacy services.

Although people were not involved in their care planning, they explained to us how they received personalised support from staff who knew them well. We also found that complaints and concerns were investigated by the service until a satisfactory resolve was reached. However, we found the service did not use these concerns and complaints to continually improve the service provided.

Although staff received regular supervision, we found no staff in the files we looked at had received an annual appraisal. We also found that there were no audits carried out at the service to ensure good, safe practice. We also found the service had a computer system in place that office staff did not fully understand, meaning discrepancies in the system could not be corrected and the system was not adequate for the role.

You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.