Archived: Caring Hearts and Hands

Caring Hearts and Hands provides personal care and support to people living in their own homes in all areas of Leeds. The office, based in the Horsforth area of Leeds is staffed Monday to Friday during office hours. An out of hour’s phone service was available.

There was a registered provider in post who fulfilled the role of 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 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

We found there were not always appropriate arrangements for the safe handling of medicines, with poor documentation and a lack of effective medicine audits. The registered provider had introduced a range of quality audits; however, these were not always effective. We saw the mental capacity assessments did not contain the decisions people were unable to make and not all staff had received Mental Capacity Act (MCA) training.

People and their relatives told us they felt safe with staff and the care they received. We found there were appropriate systems in place to protect people from risk of harm. They said they were happy with the staff who were kind and caring. People told us they were treated with dignity and respect.

People were provided with care and support by staff who had the appropriate knowledge and training and there were appropriate numbers of staff to safely and effectively meet people’s needs. Recruitment processes were managed safely. Staff told us they had received induction and on-going support. Staff were also offered opportunities for on-going development. Supervisions and appraisals had taken place.

People’s care and support needs were assessed and care plans identified how care and support should be delivered. Care and support was found to be delivered in line with people's care plans and people were consulted about the care and support required. We saw the care plans were reviewed on a regular basis to make sure they provided accurate and up to date information.

People were supported to access a range of healthcare professionals when needed and where the service provided nutritional support, people's individual dislikes and needs were supported to enable people to eat a balanced and healthy diet.

A complaints procedure was in place which enabled people to raise any concerns or complaints about the care or support they received.

We found a breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.

Care staff were able to tell us about how they met the different needs of people. They told us about the training they received to make sure they were able to care for peoples care needs.

People told us they had copies of their care plans and confirmed they were always involved in any care planning with the provider.

People told us the service was reliable and staff were usually on time and stayed for the agreed length of time.

The staff we spoke with told us there were clear lines of communication and accountability within the service and they were well supported throughout. They were aware of the policies and procedures in place to guide them on how to report and recognise abuse.

Effective quality auditing procedures were undertaken and appropriate systems were in place for gathering, recording and evaluating information about the quality of the service.