8 November 2016
During a routine inspection
Ark Home Healthcare - Waterloo is a domiciliary care agency delivering care and support to people in 10 London Boroughs. At the time of the inspection the service was providing support to 199 people.
The service did not have a registered manager at the time of the inspection. 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.
At this inspection we identified one breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. This was in relation to insufficient staff being deployed to safely deliver planned care to people. CQC is considering the action we will take.
Some people had experienced missed and late care visits and expressed anxiety that experience may be repeated. Staff were knowledgeable about the provider’s safeguarding procedures, had received safeguarding training and knew what actions to take if they suspected abuse. People’s risks of avoidable harm were reduced because staff undertook risk assessments to identify and mitigate them. People received their medicines in line with the prescriber’s instructions and with the amount of support identified in their assessments.
Staff supporting people were trained and supervised by line managers. People consented to the care staff provided. Staff supported people to meet their nutritional needs and with timely access to healthcare services.
People’s needs were assessed and they were involved in their care plans. However, people did not always receive support at the time of day they wanted. The provider regularly sought feedback from people and their relatives. People lacked confidence in the provider’s complaints procedure.
We have made a recommendation about the management of complaints.
People, relatives and staff expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of communication with office staff during office hours and during on-call periods, reporting that calls were often not answered or returned.
We have recommended that the service seek advice and support for the office based team on telephone calls management and communication with people and staff.
The service did not have a registered manager but the process of registering with CQC had been started at the time of the inspection. The service conducted quality audits and worked in partnership with professionals from health and social care agencies. The service provided staff with mobile phones and used software to gather staff views and provide information updates.