About the service Bluewood Care Ltd is a domiciliary care agency registered to provide personal care to people in their own homes. The service provides support to older people and younger people with a range of needs. This includes people with physical disabilities. At the time of our inspection the service supported 6 people, some of those people, received 24-hour care and support.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
The quality and safety of the service had deteriorated since our last inspection. Medicines were not managed safely in line with the provider’s policy and best practice guidance. Risks associated with people’s care were not always identified, assessed, or well managed.
Quality assurance systems and processes were ineffective, as they failed to identify the issues we had found, such as there was no guidance for staff to follow when administering emergency medicines to people. Opportunities to learn lessons had been missed.
Care records did not include an assessment of people’s needs and choices to ensure staff knew how people wished to be supported. Improvements were needed in the quality of training staff had received to ensure staff supported people safely.
People were not supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff did not support them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service did not support this practice. We made a recommendation to the provider regarding improvements to be made to ensure they were working within the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
Staff understood their responsibilities to keep people safe and protect from harm. Staff were recruited safely and there were sufficient staff to provide people’s care and support.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection
The last rating for this service was good (published 16 August 2018).
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted due to concerns received in relation to the quality of care and the safety of people using the service. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe, effective and well led. For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.
We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the safe, effective and well-led sections of this full report.
You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Bluewood Care Ltd on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement
We have identified breaches in relation to people’s safety and the governance of the service at this inspection.
Full information about CQC’s regulatory response to the more serious concerns found during inspections is added to reports after any representations and appeals have been concluded.
Follow up
We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.