Archived: Safehands Care Limited Bolton

Updated 26 September 2018

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.

The inspection took place on 11 and 12 July 2018 and was announced. The provider was given 48 hours’ notice because the location provided a domiciliary care service to people who lived in the community. We needed to be sure that we could access the office premises.

On the first day the inspection team consisted of two adult social care inspectors. One inspector returned for the second day of the inspection. This gave us the opportunity to see the manager and office staff; and to review care records, policies and procedures.

Before our inspection the provider completed a provider information return (PIR). The PIR is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.

We also reviewed the information we held about the service and we looked at all the statutory notifications they had sent us. A statutory notification is information about important events, which the provider is required to send to us by law.

Before the inspection visit we contacted the local authority safeguarding and commissioning teams about the service to gather relevant information. The local authority was working closely with the service to complete an action plan focused on quality assurance. We also contacted Bolton Healthwatch who said they did not have any information about the service. Healthwatch is an independent consumer champion that gathers and represents the views of the public about health and social care services in England.

During the inspection we spoke to the nominated individual, the registered manager, two office based staff members. We visited three people in their own homes and spoke to one relative. We also telephoned and spoke to six people about their experience of using the service and we telephoned seven staff members and asked them about their experience of working for the service. We contacted members of staff by email and received three responses. At the end of the inspection process we had spoken to nine people who used the service and fourteen members of staff in total.

During the office visit we looked at records relating to the management of the service. This included policies and procedures, incident and accident records, safeguarding records, complaint records, 5 staff recruitment files, training and supervision records, the training record, 7 care files, team meeting minutes, satisfaction surveys and a range of auditing tools and systems and other documents related to the inspection.

Updated 26 September 2018

This inspection took place on 11 and 12 July 2018 and was announced. This was the first inspection of Safehands Care Limited since their registration with the Care Quality Commission in July 2017.

Safehands Care Limited is a domiciliary care service located in Bolton, Greater Manchester. The service provides personal care to people living in their own homes. At the time of the inspection the service provided care and support to 177 people.

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.

At this inspection we identified two breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. These breaches were around staffing and good governance. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.

A management restructure in January 2018 had a negative impact on the performance of the service. Policies and procedures had not been consistently followed in the main office. The registered manager had been promoted to area manager during this period and took a more active role in May 2018 in response to the problems. During the inspection the registered manager provided evidence about the actions they had taken to improve the quality assurance systems.

Management oversight of safeguarding notifications had been poor. The system to monitor this was modified during the inspection to ensure better oversight in future. People using the service reported feeling safe. Staff understood safeguarding and how they would report any concerns.

Recruitment had been unsafe as people had been recruited without following procedures.

The care files needed simplifying to reduce duplication and to make them more organised and more accessible to staff. The layout and content of the files was not user friendly.

Information about people’s personal choices and preferences were not detailed enough and needed to be more visible in the care files.

The systems for organising rotas was not always effective and had a negative impact on people and staff through missed visits and call cramming where staff had to carry out too many visits in one day.

The training and induction information that we reviewed was sufficient and provided staff with the skills they needed to carry out the role.

The service worked within the principles of the Mental Capacity Act. Staff received training and could give good practice examples of care in this area.

All the people we spoke with said staff were caring and that they were treated with dignity and respect.

Promoting independence was integral to the service and this was evident in all the answers provided by the people that we spoke to.

All the staff we spoke to cared about their work and told us that they enjoyed the support workers role. They reported that they wanted to make a difference to people’s lives.

Formal complaints were investigated following a clear structure to ensure that timescales in the policy were met and that complaints were resolved as far as possible.

The registered manager was experienced and committed to service improvement. However, recent improvements need to be sustained.

The service had clear values which was apparent when we spoke to staff. All the staff that we spoke to provided strong answers on promoting people’s independence and being committed to their roles.