Archived: The Caring Company

Updated 20 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.

This inspection took place over a two days period, on the 22 and 26 September 2016 and was announced on the first day. The provider was given 48 hours’ notice of the inspection because it is a domiciliary care agency and we needed to ensure that somebody would be available to meet us in their offices. The inspection was carried out by one inspector.

Before the inspection, the provider completed a Provider Information Return (PIR) which we reviewed. 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 available to us about the service, such as the notifications that they had sent us. A notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send us by law.

During the inspection we spoke with five people using the service and one of their relatives to gain their feedback. We also spoke with four members of the care staff, the field care supervisor and the registered manager.

We reviewed the care records and risk assessments for four people who used the service. We checked medicines administration records and looked at staff recruitment and training records. We also looked at complaints and compliments received by the service, and reviewed information on how the quality of the service was monitored and managed.

Updated 20 October 2016

This inspection took place on the 22 and 26 September 2016 and was announced. The provider was given 48 hours’ notice of the inspection because we needed to ensure that somebody would be available to meet us in their offices.

A Caring Company is a domiciliary care service providing personal care and support to 27 people in their own homes.

The service had a registered manager. 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.

People and their relatives told us that they received safe care, and staff understood the process to follow to protect people from risk of abuse. However the provider did not always follow its own recruitment policy to make sure that the correct checks had been carried out for prospective employees. This meant that people were put at risk of receiving care and support from staff who may not have had the appropriate character or experience. Some risk assessments were carried out, but these needed to be broader in their depth and scope to identify and safely manage the risks to people.

People told us that they received their medicines on time from staff who had received the appropriate training, but medicines administration record (MAR) charts were not always completed correctly to account for this. People had their dietary and healthcare needs identified and the service worked with external professionals to support people with any related conditions or changes to their needs. People had care plans in place which were person-centred and regularly reviewed with involvement from people and their relatives.

People told us that they consented to receiving their care from the service and staff had received training to understand the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA). Staff received a range of additional training which enabled them to carry out their duties effectively. They were supported through a program of supervision and appraisal and were able to contribute to the development of the service through team meetings. Staff were usually able to attend to people’s visits on time and stay for the correct duration, although some people raised concerns about the way in which rotas were managed.

There were quality monitoring processes in place for identifying improvements that needed to be made, however these were not robust enough to identify the issues we found during the inspection. Some areas of people’s support such as the management of medicines were not audited and so errors or omissions were not being rectified. People, their relatives and staff were positive about the support they received from the registered manager. Questionnaires and surveys were sent out regularly to ask for people’s views and comments about the quality of the care provided.