Archived: Meyers Care Agency

Updated 12 October 2016

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

We undertook an announced focused inspection of Meyers Care Agency on 29 July 2016. This inspection was carried out to check that improvements to meet legal requirements planned by the provider after our inspection on the 27 January 2016 had been made. The service was inspected against three of the five questions we ask about services: is the service safe, is the service effective and is the service well led. This is because the service was not meeting some legal requirements.

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection because it is small and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care. We needed to be sure that they would be available. The inspection was undertaken by one inspector.

Prior to this inspection we reviewed all the information we held about the service, including data about safeguarding and statutory notifications. Statutory notifications are information about important events which the provider is required to send us by law. We also spoke with the local authority to gain their feedback as to the care that people received.

We visited the registered office and spoke to the provider.

We looked at the recruitment records and policy, supervision records and the records relating to the training of the staff employed at the service. We also reviewed audit systems and processes to ensure that robust quality monitoring processes were now in place.

Updated 12 October 2016

This inspection was announced and took place on 29 July 2016.

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of this service on 27 January 2016. Breaches of legal requirements were found. After the comprehensive inspection, the provider wrote to us to say what they would do to meet legal requirements in relation to the breaches.

We undertook this focused inspection to check that they had followed their plan and to confirm that they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to those requirements. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Meyers Care Agency on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

During our inspection in January 2016; we found that staff had not been recruited safely to work at the service. Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks had not been completed prior to members of staff commencing work and references obtained had not been validated or sought from an appropriate source. There were also gaps in the employment history of staff and application forms had not been completed fully. This meant that safe recruitment processes were not followed to ensure that people were protected from the employment of unsuitable members of staff.

We also identified that staff did not always receive adequate training or induction to carry out their roles effectively or receive appropriate levels of supervision or observation. This meant that people were not always supported by trained, competent members of staff.

In addition we found that the provider had not consistently implemented effective systems or processes to assess, monitor and improve the safety of the services being provided. Monitoring systems and processes were completed but did not identify any actions to make improvements when required.

Medicine audits had been completed but routinely failed to identify recording errors. Changes required to medicine administration records (MAR) to ensure that they accurately reflected the medicines being administered were also not identified.

Furthermore, we identified that a local authority inspection had taken place and no action had been taken to address areas identified for improvement or the completion of the required action points.

Meyers Care Agency is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care and support to people in their own homes. At the time of our inspection the agency was providing a service to five people.

The service had a registered manager who is also the provider. 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.

During this inspection, we found that safe recruitment procedures were in place. A recruitment policy was in place and a flowchart detailing each stage of the recruitment process to be followed had been implemented. An audit of staff files had been conducted and the records that we viewed were complete and the necessary pre-employment checks had been completed. However no new staff had been recruited to the service or commenced employment so the provider was unable to fully demonstrate any improvements they had made to the safety of the service since our last inspection.

We reviewed staff records and found that staff had received supervision and an appraisal meeting had been held. The provider also had completed competency checks on the performance of all staff. A review of all training completed by staff had been conducted and the provider had registered staff to complete further training. Records relating to training were consistent and fully completed.

We reviewed the audit and quality monitoring systems in place, and found that these had been improved. The medicine administration records (MAR) in place were more effective, audit checks were taking place and issues were identified and addressed. We also found the provider had taken action to address the areas for improvement identified in the local authority inspection.