Archived: St Cathrines Care Ltd

Updated 23 February 2016

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was 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 on the 01 December 2015 and was announced. The provider was given 48 hours’ notice because the location provides a domiciliary care service and we needed to be sure that someone would be at the location at the time of our inspection.

The inspection team consisted of one inspector. Before the inspection we reviewed previous reports and notifications that are held on the CQC database. Notifications are important events that the service has to let the CQC know about by law.

During our inspection we spoke with two relatives of people, we also spoke with the registered manager, provider and three care staff. We reviewed four care files, three staff recruitment files and their support records.

Updated 23 February 2016

The Inspection took place on the 01 December 2015.

St Cathrines Care Ltd provides personal care for people within their own homes. There were six people using the service on the day of our inspection.

The service did have a registered manager. 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 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run. The overall rating for this provider is ‘Inadequate’. This means that it has been placed into ‘Special measures’ by CQC. The purpose of special measures is to:

• Ensure that providers found to be providing inadequate care significantly improve.

• Provide a framework within which we use our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and work with, or signpost to, other organisations in the system to ensure improvements are made.

• Provide a clear timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of care they provide or we will seek to take further action, for example cancel their registration.

Services placed in special measures will be inspected again within six months. If insufficient improvements have been made such that there remains a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures to begin the process of preventing the provider from operating the service. This will lead to cancelling their registration or to varying the terms of their registration within six months if they do not improve. The service will be kept under review and if needed could be escalated to urgent enforcement action.

Care and treatment was not planned and delivered in a way that was intended to ensure people's safety and welfare. Risk assessments and care plans had not been completed for people.

Medication was dispensed by staff who had not received training to do so. Staff had not been recruited or employed in a way that had ensured people’s safety.

People were not always safeguarded from the potential of harm and their freedoms were protected. Staff were not provided with training in Safeguarding Adults from abuse, Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005 and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS).

The service did not have any systems or processes in place to gathering people’s views. There were no systems or processes in place to monitor or access the effectiveness of the service.