Radis Community Care (Coventry)

Updated 6 June 2023

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 Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection was completed by 2 inspectors who visited the service’s office and 2 Expert’s by Experience who completed telephone calls to people and their relatives.

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 own homes.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

We gave the service less than 24 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because we needed to ensure the registered manager or provider would be at the service to support the inspection.

Inspection activity started on 26 April 2023 and ended on 12 May 2023. We visited the location’s office on 26 April 2023.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since their registration. We sought feedback from the local authority. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with 14 people who used the service and 8 relatives. We spoke with 10 members of staff including the registered manager, area manager, care coordinators, field supervisors and care assistants. We reviewed 8 people's care records, 3 staff files and multiple medicine records. We also looked at a variety of records relating to the management of the service, including policies and procedures.

Updated 6 June 2023

About the service

Radis Community Care (Coventry) is a domiciliary care service providing personal care and support to 162 people at the time of inspection. The service provides support to adults who have a range of needs, including those living with dementia, learning disability and/or autism and physical disabilities. The service provides long term support to people and a short-term, fast response service for up to six weeks. The short-term service supports people ready for discharge from hospital to return to their own homes. At the time of our inspection there were 162 people using the service.

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

Managerial oversight at the location required improvement to ensure all risks were identified and acted upon to ensure people received safe care. We did not find any evidence people were harmed due to the improvements required.

Assessment of people’s risks to ensure staff provided safe care was not always consistent. People’s care records did not always contain comprehensive information for staff to follow. However, staff demonstrated good understanding of people’s needs and risks and people felt safe with the care staff provided.

Medicines were not always administered safely as most staff required updated training. Procedures on preparing and administering medicines covertly was not always followed. Infection control policy and staff training required improvement; however, staff demonstrated knowledge in effective infection control procedures.

People were not supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff did not support them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service did not support this practice.

People’s experience of care call times and duration of care visits varied and the service was in the process of recruiting more staff. People told us they had positive and negative experiences when contacting the office and management team. Improvements were being made by managers to obtain people’s views and experiences about the care they received to drive improvement.

Staff felt supported by the registered manager. The service worked closely with external health and social care professionals to ensure people’s needs were met in a safe and timely manner.

People were protected from the risk of abuse and the service had systems in place to respond to concerns and learn from incidents.

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. We considered this guidance as there were people using the service who have a learning disability and or who are autistic.

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

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published 02 September 2019).

Why we inspected

The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about a substantiated safeguarding concern regarding a person’s care. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only. For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

We have found evidence the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the safe and well-led sections of this full report.

We found no evidence people had been harmed due to the improvements required and the registered manager took immediate action to mitigate risks where required.

You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Radis Community Care (Coventry) on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Enforcement

We have identified a breach in relation to the managerial oversight and management of risk within the service.

Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.

Follow up

We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.