Archived: Curant Care Maidstone

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

Caring – this means we looked for evidence that the provider involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

At our last assessment we rated this key question good. At this assessment the rating has changed to inadequate. This meant people were not treated with compassion and there were breaches of dignity; staff caring attitudes had significant shortfalls.

The service was in breach of legal regulation in relation to treating people with dignity and respect.

This service scored 25 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The provider did not treat people with kindness, empathy and compassion, or respect their privacy and dignity. Staff did not treat colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

Individual staff did treat people with kindness, and this was reflected in some of the feedback we received. One relative told us, “They are very nice.” One person said, “The best thing is definitely the people, it’s them that make it, if you get the wrong carers your whole day can be miserable. If you get nice, friendly and fun carers that sets my day up.” People also told us staff always knocked and announced they had arrived.

However, there was a lack of kindness and compassion demonstrated by the provider as there was a lack of oversight and action when needed. For example, when staff did not attend calls and action was not taken to address this until we raised concerns. Calls were late, early or short. People told us there were times where some staff did not complete tasks or clean up after themselves.

The provider did not treat people as individuals or make sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. The provider did not take account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

Most people were happy with the support they received from the care staff. However, some people did raise concerns about times when staff did not know how to support them, and care did not meet their needs. For example, one person raised concerns about how staff supported them with their meals. How people lived their day to day lives was not always well considered so that care supported their individual needs. People were left waiting for care or unsure when staff would arrive.

The provider did not promote people’s independence, so people did not know their rights andhave choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing

Care plans did provide a good level of detail about what personal care tasks people could and could not do for themselves and where assistance was needed. However, this level of detail was not reflected across the whole care plan where detail was in the main lacking. For example, staff told us one person could drive and valued independence. This was not well reflected in their care plan. There were concerns about care calls not happening on time. For example, one person told us care calls were often later than they needed and this interrupted their plans for the day. They told us they had raised this and the matter had not been resolved. This did not lead to the person having choice and control within their life. We also identified concerns about the managers understanding of people’s capacity to make decisions.

The provider did not listen to or understand people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff did not respond to people’s needs in the moment or act to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress.

Feedback from people was mixed. Some people and relatives told us they felt listened to. One relative told us, “If I have mentioned something I have done it straight away.” However, other people told us more recently they did not always feel heard. One person told us, “Sometimes I think it gets swept under the carpet if I ring and say I didn’t get a call, sometimes it feels not listened to, and there’s no feedback. You don’t get listened to basically.” This view was supported by our findings regarding call times and staffing levels.

The provider did not care about or promote the wellbeing of their staff. They did not support or enable staff to deliver person-centred care.

The provider told us there were high levels of sickness within the staff team. However, there was no clear plan when we asked what they were doing to address this. The manager told us they’d sent out information about mental wellbeing support for staff. However, feedback from staff on how valued and supported they felt was mixed. One staff told us, “I feel really well supported. If I have a problem I would go to the office and speak to them.” Another carer told us, “Support is a bit hit and miss, depending on how well staffed the office is.” Another said, “It can’t be any easy job to be a supervisor but if they are out doing calls, [and not in the office] it’s not helpful and can mess up the clients and the staff.”

We found there was insufficient staff to provide people with support. Office staff were doing care calls as well as office work and this impacted on them and also the wider staff team. The provider was not investing in staff training and ensuring staff had robust care plans, risk assessments and guidance.