Brooklands Homecare Ltd - Edenbridge

Brooklands Homecare Ltd - Edenbridge is a domiciliary care service that provides personal care for older people, younger adults, people who live with dementia and people who need support to maintain their mental health. It can also provide personal care for people with physical and/or sensory adaptive needs. At the time of this inspection the service was providing care for 60 people.

The personal care is provided by care staff completing care calls to people in their own homes. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) only inspects the service being received by people provided with personal care, where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided.

People's experience of using the service and what we found

People were positive about the service. A person said, “I think the service is very good in that it’s reliable and the staff are very kind and attentive. I can count on them.”

Shortly before the inspection the local safeguarding of adults authority had found a person had not been suitably supported to take medicines in a safe way. The person had also not been properly assisted to keep their home clean. The registered provider accepted the person had not been consistently assisted to manage their medicines in a safe way. They also said that a more robust approach should have been adopted to supporting the person to keep their home clean. These shortfalls had occurred because systems and processes used to operate, monitor and evaluate the running of the service were not consistently robust. We have made a recommendation about management systems.

Our other findings are as follows: People had received safe care and treatment and there were enough care staff to reliably complete care calls on time. Safe recruitment practices were in place.

Care was delivered in line with national guidance by care staff who had the knowledge and skills they needed. People were supported to eat and drink enough to have a balanced diet. People had been helped to obtain medical attention

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

Care staff were courteous, respectful and promoted people’s independence. Confidential information was kept private.

People were consulted about the care they received and had information given to them in an accessible way. Equality and diversity was promoted and people were assisted to pursue their hobbies and interests. There were suitable arrangements to manage complaints and to enable people to have a dignified death.

People had been consulted about the development of the service. Good team work was promoted and joint working was in place.

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

Rating at last inspection and update

The rating for this service at the last inspection was Requires Improvement (published 31 August 2018) and there was one breach of regulations. The registered provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found that improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

The service remains rated Requires Improvement. This service has been rated Requires Improvement for the last two consecutive inspections.

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating.

Follow up

We will meet with the registered provider following this report being published to discuss how they will make changes to ensure they improve their rating to at least, Good. We will work with the local authority to monitor progress. We will return to visit as per our inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.

Brooklands Homecare (Edenbridge) is a domiciliary care agency that supports and cares for people who want to remain in the comfort of their own home. They provide support for older people and people living with disabilities in Kent, East Sussex and Surrey. Brooklands Homecare (Edenbridge) was registered with the Care Quality Commission in May 2015. CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also take into account any wider social care provided. At the time of our inspection, there were approximately 80 people who received support with personal care tasks.

At the last inspection, the service was rated Good. At this inspection, we found the service requires improvement.

There was a registered manager at the service. 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 registered manager had not always followed effective recruitment procedures to check that potential staff employed were of good character and had the skills and experience needed to carry out their roles. The registered manager had not ensured that all staff had two suitable references before working alone in the community and some staff had no appropriate vehicle documentations to carry out their work.

The registered manager had processes in place to monitor the delivery of the service. However, this had not been effective in rectifying the shortfall we found in recruitment. We have made a recommendation about this.

The registered manager and staff knew what their responsibilities were in relation to keeping people safe from the risk of abuse. The registered manager and staff recognised the signs of abuse and what to look out for. There were systems in place to support staff and people to stay safe. Medicines were managed safely and people received them as prescribed.

There were systems in place to monitor incidents and accidents. There were arrangements in place for the service to make sure that action was taken and lessons were learned when things went wrong, to improve safety across the service.

The registered manager deployed sufficient numbers of staff to meet people’s needs and provide a flexible service.

Management systems were in use to minimise the risks from the spread of infection as staff received training about controlling infection and had access to personal protective equipment like disposable gloves and aprons.

Staff had received training as is necessary to enable them to carry out the duties they were employed to perform. All staff received induction training at start of their employment. Refresher training was provided at regular intervals.

People’s needs had been properly assessed by Brooklands Homecare prior to receiving support from the service. Care plans had been developed with people by Brooklands Homecare on how to meet their needs.

Staff understood the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and how to support people's best interest if they lacked capacity. People continued to be supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service support this practice.

Staff continued to have good levels of support and supervision to enable them to carry out their roles. There was a programme of planned training which was relevant to the work staff carried out and the needs of the people using the service.

People continued to receive care from staff that were caring. People were treated with dignity and respect and staff ensured their privacy was maintained.

People were encouraged to make decisions about how their care was provided. Staff had a good understanding of people's needs and preferences.

People were supported with meal planning, preparation, eating and drinking. Staff supported people, by contacting the office to alert the registered manager to any identified health needs so that their doctor or nurse could be informed.

People said that they knew they could contact the registered manager at any time, and they felt confident about raising any concerns or other issues.

Staff had access to an ‘out of hours’ support that they could contact during evenings and weekends if they had concerns about people. The service could continue to run in the event of emergencies arising so that people’s care would continue

We found a breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.

Brooklands Homecare (Edenbridge) is a domiciliary care agency that supports and cares for people who want to remain in the comfort of their own home. They provide support for older people and people living with disabilities in Kent, East Sussex and Surrey. Brooklands Homecare (Edenbridge) was registered with the Care Quality Commission in May 2015. There were approximately 55 people receiving care from Brooklands at the time of our inspection.

There was a registered manager in post. 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 provider was meeting the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005. The management team and staff had been trained in the principles of the MCA and appropriate assessments of people's mental capacity were carried out.

All staff had completed essential training relevant to their role and were scheduled for refresher courses. There was an appropriate system in place to monitor staff practice and staff received appropriate one to one supervision and additional support or training when necessary.

People and their relatives told us staff had developed positive relationships with them and described their practice in positive terms. Privacy and dignity in practice were included for discussions at regular staff meetings.

There was an open and positive culture which focussed on people. People described the management team in positive terms.

The manager sought people's views, acted on feedback and learned from complaints in order to improve the service and people's experiences. Appropriate action was taken when staff did not abide by the expected code of conduct.