Archived: Concept Home Care Limited

Updated 25 April 2019

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. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team:

The inspection was carried out by one adult social care inspector on the first day, and two adult social care inspectors on the second.

Service and service type:

Concept Home Care Limited is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection:

We gave the service 72 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small and we needed to be sure that the registered manager would be in.’

What we did:

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.

Prior to the inspection we contacted Cheshire East Council to seek their views of the service. They informed us that the provider had asked to be removed from their list of providers and therefore they did not commission with the service. We also reviewed information we held about the service and checked whether we had received any notifications about events which the provider is required to tell us about by law.

Providers are required to send us key information about their service, what they do well and improvements they intend to make. This information helps support our inspections. We looked at the information the provider had sent us about the service in the Provider Information Return (PIR).

During the inspection we visited the office location to meet with the registered manager. We also spoke with one service user, one relative and a care worker in person and one care worker and two Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council [SMBC] staff by telephone. We looked at one person’s care records and other records relating to the operation of the service. After the inspection visits we asked the registered manager to provide some additional information and liaised with two SMBC again.

Updated 25 April 2019

About the service:

Concept Home Care Limited is a provider of community home care services. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes in the community. It provides a service to younger and older people. At the time of the inspection it was providing personal care to one person.

People's experience of using the service:

People did not receive a service that was safe and were not protected from abuse or avoidable harm.

Staff were not given opportunities to review their work and development needs. Safe recruitment procedures were not followed.

People’s needs were assessed before they began to receive care and support from the service, however they were not regularly reviewed.

People were not always treated with dignity and respect and were not supported to express their views.

The service was not well-led and there was a lack of robust and effective quality assurance processes.

Policies and procedures had not been reviewed or revised so could not be relied upon to provide up to date guidance for staff.

People were supported to eat and drink in line with personal choice.

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

Rating at last inspection:

This was the first inspection at Concept Home Care Limited.

Why we inspected:

This was a planned comprehensive inspection.

Enforcement:

Full information about CQC’s regulatory response to the more serious concerns found during inspections is added to reports after any representations and appeals have been concluded.

Follow up:

The overall rating for this registered provider is ‘Inadequate’ and the service is therefore in ‘special measures’. Services in special measures will be kept under review and, if we have not taken immediate action to propose to cancel the provider’s registration of the service, will be inspected again within six months. The expectation is that providers found to have been providing inadequate care should have made significant improvements within this timeframe.

If not enough improvement is made within this timeframe so that there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall, we will act in line with our enforcement procedures to begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will lead to cancelling their registration or to varying the terms of their registration within six months if they do not improve.

For adult social care services, the maximum time for being in special measures will usually be no more than 12 months. If the service has demonstrated improvements when we inspect it and it is no longer rated as inadequate for any of the five key questions it will no longer be in special measures.

Following the inspection we received an application from the registered provider to cancel their registration with the CQC. This application is currently in process.