Archived: Lotus Care

Below is a summary of what we found. If you want to see the evidence supporting our summary please read our full report.

Is the service safe?

We inspected this service previously on 27 January 2014 and identified improvements were required in several different areas. These included people's consent to care, the safe care and welfare for people, how the service supported it's workers, how the service monitored and assessed the quality of its service and the quality of the service's records. We found the provider had made changes following our previous inspection and improvements had been made in all these areas.

We saw people's care records accurately reflected their care needs. We saw people had risk assessments in place that made sure risks to their health were managed. We found people's care records had been recently reviewed by senior staff.

Is the service effective?

People told us the care they received met their needs. They told us they had been involved in planning the care they received.

We found staff treated people with respect and gained people's consent before they supported them.

Staff we spoke with had a clear understanding of the needs of the people they supported and what they told us was reflected in people's care plans.

We spoke with staff and found they felt supported by their managers and felt able to raise any issues they had.

Is the service caring?

We spoke with seven people who used the service and they were all positive about the staff who supported them. For example people told us: 'They (staff) are very caring', 'They know what they're doing' and 'The staff are brilliant.'

Staff we spoke with were positive about their role as care workers.

Is the service responsive?

We found people were asked for their views about their care and these were acted on. We saw the provider had sent out a quality assurance survey to people who used the service in January 2014. The results we saw from the survey were positive.

People told us they felt comfortable to raise any issues they had about the service. We found issues were responded to by senior staff in a timely way.

We saw incidents and accidents had been responded to and actions had been taken to make improvements following investigations. However we found some incidents were not recorded on the appropriate forms.

People told us the service was flexible and they could contact the care office at short notice and request changes to their care.

People told us care staff noticed when their needs had changed and took appropriate action.

Is the service well led?

We found the service had an effective quality assurance system in place and any identified actions had led to improvements in the service people received.

We found the service had worked towards completing their action plan which identified improvements required to be undertaken to meet the essential standards as set out by the Care Quality Commission and recommendations made by the Local Authority.

We found evidence improvements had been made to the service following investigation of concerns.

The registered manager told us that the previous care manager had left in early January 2014 and they were in the process of recruiting a new care manager. A new supervisor began work in January 2014.

Most people we spoke with were positive about the care they received. One person who used the service told us, 'I am happy with the care.' They told us the staff were, 'Excellent.' A person's representative told us, 'I found them impressive.' They told us they had recommended the service to other people.

We found that staff treated people with respect and gained people's verbal consent before they supported them.

We saw that people's care records had not been regularly reviewed and some people had not signed to consent to the care and support they received.

We found that some people had not been initially assessed by the service and these people had no care plans for staff to follow.

We spoke with staff and found that most staff felt supported by their manager and felt able to raise any issues. We found that staff were not receiving frequent one to one meetings with their manager.

We found there was no system for monitoring the quality of the records within the service. Some care records we looked at were not accurate and some records were missing.

The service was reviewed by the local authority during December 2013. The local authority made recommendations to the service to ensure that all customer files were reviewed and care records updated.

We gathered evidence of people's experiences through speaking with two people who used the service and one person's relative. We spoke with two members of staff who supported the people we spoke with about their experiences.

People who used the service told us that the care they or their relative received, matched the care that was discussed with them. They told us that they were involved in planning the care and that reviews were held to reassess their needs.

One person told us that care staff were, 'Very polite, very friendly' and they were, 'Very happy with them.'

We saw that the care plans were person centred and that people and family members had provided information in the care plans. We found that people's care plans reflected their needs.

During our last inspection of this service in July 2011 we made an improvement action due to a minor concern that staff did not always record on medication administration record (MAR) sheets, when medication was administered. During our inspection, we looked at this issue again.