27 September 2022
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Ashley Care is a domiciliary care service providing personal care and support to people in their own homes. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. At the time of our inspection, the domiciliary care service was providing support to 107 people, 80 of those were receiving support with 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.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
The provider’s governance arrangements did not provide assurance the service was well led, and regulatory requirements were not being met.
People told us they had not had any missed calls; however, they were often not informed if staff were running late, and this impacted on people receiving their calls at their scheduled times.
We have made a recommendation about the management of some medicines.
Staff had been safely recruited; however, we were not satisfied staffing levels and deployment of staff ensured all people’s care needs were met in a timely way.
Risks to people had been identified, assessed and reviewed.
People and their relatives told us they felt safe using the service. People were cared for by staff who knew how to keep them safe and protect them from avoidable harm.
The majority of staff felt confident their training provided them with the knowledge they needed to support people safely.
Staff had access to personal protective equipment (PPE) and there were effective infection prevention and control measures 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 last rating for this service was inadequate (published May 2022) and there were breaches of regulation. The 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 significant improvements had been made with regard to regulation 18 [Staffing] and regulation 12 [Safe care and treatment]. However, the provider remained in breach of regulation 17 [Good governance].
This service has been in Special Measures since May 2022. During this inspection the provider demonstrated improvements have been made. The service is no longer rated as inadequate overall or in any of the key questions. Therefore, this service is no longer in Special Measures.
Why we inspected
We undertook this focused inspection to check they had followed their action plan and to confirm they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions Safe and Well-led which contain those requirements. 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 Inadequate to Requires Improvement. This is based on the findings at this inspection.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Ashley Care on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement
We are mindful of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our regulatory function. This meant we took account of the exceptional circumstances arising as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic when considering what enforcement action was necessary and proportionate to keep people safe as a result of this inspection. We will continue to monitor the service and will take further action if needed.
We have identified breaches in relation to 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 request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.