Phoenix Gold Homecare Main Office

Phoenix Gold Homecare Main Office is a is a community-based care provider that provides personal care to people living in their own homes. At the time of inspection there were 21 people in receipt of the regulated activity of personal care.

Everyone who received support at the time of our inspection received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided.

People's experience of using this service and what we found

Risk assessment and risk management plans required improvement to ensure staff were always provided with up to date information on how to mitigate risks to people. Recruitment processes needed to be improved to ensure staff were always recruited safely. There were sufficient staff to support people safely with their scheduled care calls. Staff had received training in safeguarding and knew the actions to take to keep people safe. Overall, people's medicines were managed safely. The provider had infection control policies and procedures in place to guide staff on how to reduce the risk of infections.

People were not always supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff didn’t always support them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service did not support the assessment of people’s mental capacity to determine how and when best interests decisions were made. Staff received induction and training in their role. The service worked with health and social care professionals to improve outcomes for people.

The provider had improved governance systems since our previous inspection and had introduced new auditing systems. However, governance systems were not always effective in identifying areas of improvement such as recruitment procedures and risk management. Staff spoke positively about leaders at the service.

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 June 2019). At this inspection this rating has changed to requires improvement.

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service. This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions of Safe, Effective and Well-led which contain those requirements. The ratings from the previous comprehensive inspection for those key questions not looked at on this occasion were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection. The overall rating for the service has changed to requires improvement. We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the Safe, Effective and Well Led sections of the full report.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Phoenix Gold Home Care on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.

People’s experience of using this service:

The provider and registered manager needed to ensure they had effective systems in place to have full oversight of the quality and standard of care.

People were happy with the care and support they received; they had developed positive relationships with staff.

Staff were described as friendly, caring and passionate about the work they did. Always having time with people to chat and have a laugh.

The service had a positive ethos and an open culture. The registered manager and provider were approachable, understood the needs of people, and listened to people, staff and relatives.

People were treated with respect, kindness, dignity and compassion. They had detailed personalised plans of care in place to enable staff to provide consistent care and support in line with their personal preferences.

People were protected from the risk of harm and received their prescribed medicines safely.

Staff knew their responsibilities as defined by the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA 2005). The provider was aware of how to make referrals if people lacked capacity to consent to aspects of their care and support.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service supported this

Staff were appropriately recruited and there were enough staff to provide care and support to people to meet their needs.

People were supported to maintain good health and nutrition and were assisted to access other health professionals when needed.

Information was provided to people in an accessible format to enable them to make decisions about their care and support.

People knew how to raise a concern or make a complaint and there was a system in place to manage any complaints received.

The service met the characteristics for a rating of "requires improvement" in one key question and “good” in four we inspected. Therefore, our overall rating for the service after this inspection was "good".

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we inspected: This was the first comprehensive inspection since the service has registered with the Care Quality Commission in June 2018.

Follow up: We will continue to monitor information and intelligence we receive about the service to ensure good quality is provided to people. We will return to re-inspect in line with our inspection timescales for Requires Improvement services.