OOJ Homecare Services Limited

OOJ Homecare Services Limited is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to adults living in their own homes. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. Care Quality Commission (CQC) only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided. During our inspection visit, the provider was caring for 21 people in Leeds and Scarborough.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

Right Support: Although there were policies and procedures in place to ensure people's rights under the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) was respected, we found people were not always supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff did not always support them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests.

Medicines were not always managed safely. Medication administration records (MARs) were not completed in line with national guidance.

We could not be assured all aspects of recruitment were managed safely.

Right Care: People told us they received kind and compassionate care however we found concerns in relation to quality of records, late visits, and quality assurance systems. Staff protected and respected people’s privacy and dignity. They understood and responded to their individual needs. Staff knew and understood people well and were responsive, supporting their aspirations to live a quality life of their choosing.

Right Culture: People’s care plans and daily records lacked detail and were not always person-centred. Effective quality monitoring was not fully in place and issues identified had not been previously identified by the provider. The registered manager cooperated with the inspection process and told us the action they would take to address the issues found.

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

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published 12 March 2020).

At our last inspection we recommended the provider consults and implements good practice and guidance in recording administration of medication and recording of mental capacity assessments and best interest decisions. At this inspection we found further concerns in these areas and the recommendations had not been acted upon by the provider.

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to staffing. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has changed from good to requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection.

We have found evidence the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the safe and well led sections of this full report.

You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.

The provider has been responsive and taken action to mitigate risks including updating care plans, arranging medication reviews, and putting additional medication administration records (MARs) in place.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for OOJ Homecare Services Limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Enforcement

We have identified breaches in relation to safe care and treatment and good governance at this inspection.

Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.

OOJ Homecare is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to adults living in their own homes. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided. At the time of out inspection, the agency was providing personal care for 9 people.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

People told us they felt safe with the care provided and were confident any concerns would be acted on immediately by the registered manager. Relatives also told us their loved ones received safe care.

Medication was managed well overall, however we have made a recommendation for the registered manager to make improvements in the recording of medication administered to people to ensure it was in line with best practice and guidance.

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. We made a recommendation for the provider to improve the recording of relevant discussions and decisions about the care of people who lacked capacity to make decisions.

Risks to people’s care were assessed and measures put in place to manage those risks. Staff had a good understanding of how to support people safely and knew what to do if they had concerns. Staff had completed safeguarding adults training and knew how to recognise and report concerns.

Staff were recruited safely. There were enough staff to provide people with the care and support they needed. People and their relatives told us staff mostly arrived on time or informed people when they were running late.

People and their relatives felt staff had appropriate skills and were competent. Staff had a good understanding of the needs of people they supported and had access to ongoing training and supervision to support and improve their practice.

People and relatives continue to tell us they received a service that had a positive impact on their lives. Good relationships had been developed between people and staff. People and their relatives told us staff were consistently kind, caring and compassionate.

People were supported to have a balanced diet that met their individual needs and preferences. The provider kept in contact with relevant healthcare services to ensure people had their care and health needs met.

People, their relatives and staff were complimentary about the leadership and management of the service. There were several systems in place to monitor the quality of care. At this inspection, we found record keeping could be improved to better evidence care delivered.

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

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published in 20 July 2017).

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.

OOJ Home care is registered to provide personal care to people living in their own homes. This was the first inspection of the service since it was registered in November 2015. At the time of the inspection the service was providing personal care to nine people who used the service.

This inspection visit took place on 10 May 2017 and was announced.

There was a registered manager for 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.

Assessments about potential risks to people had been completed to ensure care staff knew how to keep people safe from potential harm. People were protected from harm by care staff provided with training to ensure they knew how to recognise and report potential abuse. Training had been delivered to care staff to ensure they knew how to administer medicines safely. People told us they received a service from staff that were consistent and reliable.

Care staff had been provided with training to enable them to effectively carry out their roles. People told us care staff involved them in decisions and ensured their consent was obtained in relation to personal care tasks. Whilst we saw checks were carried out of potential care staff we spoke with the registered manager about the need to ensure application forms were clearly completed to enable a record of staff previous employment history to be obtained.

People told us care staff treated them with courtesy and kindness and maintained their personal dignity. People told us their care staff respected their wishes for privacy and supported them to be as independent as possible. People’s support plans contained evidence of assistance provided to ensure their health and wellbeing was maintained.

People told us that overall they were happy with the service they received and were confident any concerns would be appropriately addressed and resolved where this was possible.

Care staff told us the registered manager was open, approachable, listened to them and worked in partnership with people who used the service. The registered provider consulted and engaged with people to ensure their views could be obtained in order to help them learn and improve. Whilst there was a system in place to enable the quality of the service to be monitored, we have recommended this be strengthened to help the service develop. The address of the service was currently not correctly registered with Companies House which meant we might not be able to take action if this was needed.