UK Specialist Care Ltd

On this page

• Overview
• Shared direction and culture
• Capable, compassionate and inclusive leaders
• Freedom to speak up
• Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion
• Governance, management and sustainability
• Partnerships and communities
• Learning, improvement and innovation

Well-led – this means we looked for evidence that service leadership, management and governance assured high-quality, person-centred care; supported learning and innovation; and promoted an open, fair culture.

This is the first inspection for this service. This key question has been rated requires improvement.

This meant the provider did not always support the delivery of high-quality, person-centred care.

This service scored 57 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

Staff cared for and enjoyed supporting people. Staff said they would recommend the service to friends and family who needed care. A member of staff told us they loved helping people and meeting people from different walks of life.

The service aimed to give people consistently good care and staff worked together to try and achieve this. Individual supervision and staff meetings were used to reinforce this culture.

Staff were positive about the leadership of the service and felt the managers were caring. Staff told us they felt listened to. One staff member said, “I absolutely love it. I love what I do, I love the company I work for. They listen and care for the clients and if you have any issues, they address them.” The provider delivered care to people regularly and worked alongside the staff team. However, they did not have effective oversight of the service.

Individual staff supervision and group team meetings were used by the provider as a platform to ensure that all staff felt able to raise any concerns they might have.

Relatives told us they felt conformable to raise any issues with the registered manager.

Team meetings were not completed on a regular basis. However, staff had access to regular supervision and one to one meetings and told us they felt supported by leaders. The provider did not have a clear process in place to retrieve members of staff feedback of the service.

Staff told us they work well together and felt supported by leaders. A staff member told us the manager understood their individual needs and supported staff well when they had personal carer duties.

Equality and diversity training was listed as mandatory for all staff. However, the training matrix did not evidence that the training had been completed by all staff members but the registered manager.

The registered manager and staff members told us audits and quality checks were carried out to monitor the service and ensure it continued to provide a good service.

Staff told us, “Yes, [we have spot checks] had one a few weeks ago, [manager] came around asked client if all ok , asked me if all was ok.” Another staff member told us, “They [Manager] come unannounced, check environment, communication sheet, talk to us observe us and asks the client how they feel.”

The provider had governance systems in place however these systems were not always effective in identifying and driving improvements at the service. The providers governance systems were not always robust and did not always have clear outcomes to enable improvement and change. The provider did not have effective and consistent processes in place to audit the quality of care in the service. Although the provider had audits in place, the audits completed were not robust and had not identified the issues we found at this inspection, in relation to care plans lacking information, people not having access to their care plans and regular reviews of care plans being completed with people involved. Lack of communication with people and their relatives and mandatory staff training not having been completed. The provider’s audits did not address all of the above areas.

We requested various documents to review as part of the assessment. However, we did not receive the documents despite further prompts, examples are staff supervision and appraisal notes, audits, training matrix amongst this. We requested to review all audits however only telephone monitoring records and 2 spot check forms from 2023 were provided for us to review. The audits provided lacked detailed, and we did not see evidence of the learning outcomes taken from the audits.

Relatives generally led on the liaising and appointment scheduling with health professionals.

No feedback received

The provider worked with the local authority, to keep up to date with the community and received referrals from them.

Staff recognised the importance of learning lessons and continuous improvement. They told us any incidents and accidents were recorded and reviewed to learn lessons.

System and processes had not been effective at identifying areas of improvement we found throughout this inspection. We identified shortfalls which have led to breaches of regulations. This meant quality performance had not always been assessed, potential risks to people were not always identified and lessons learned to drive improvements had not always been possible.