Archived: Aspect Domiciliary Care

They said that care workers were aware of their personal preferences and that they had confidence in them being able to meet their needs.

We were told that people felt staff were unaware of how to prepare some simple food snacks and didn't offer a choice of food. People said they felt carers were also restricted by the time they had with the individual and often only prepared foods that were seen as quick and easy to prepare.

People told us that staff were not always aware of procedures necessary to minimise the risk of infection and needed to be told to change gloves between care procedures.

Some people told us that carers assisted them with taking their medication although this was not documented in the care plans. We also saw one person being administered their medication despite the agency having a medication policy which did not allow this.

Relatives said that they could not be sure that people had received their medication as prescribed, as there was no clear system of documentation by the carers.

Although people told us they were generally happy with the staffing, some people said that they would prefer different times for visits but the agency could not accommodate this. They also told us that they did not receive staff schedules from the agency, so were unsure what staff would turn up and sometimes extra carers came, without their permission, for training purposes.

We observed that staff were kind, caring and friendly when providing care to people in their own homes.

People receiving care and their relatives told us that they knew how to make a complaint or raise concerns and felt confident to do this.

We were told by relatives and people receiving care, that they did not recall discussing their written plans of care with the agency and had not signed them in agreement. We were told that people did not know what was written about them in their care files or had difficulty understanding what was there.