Archived: Beckside Court

Updated 2 May 2019

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team:

This inspection was conducted by one inspection manager, one adult social care inspector and an assistant inspector.

Service and service type:

The service was a domiciliary care agency.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided. The registered manager was not based at the service location and they were not overseeing the management of the regulated activity on a day to day basis. This was delegated to the business manager, who had been in post 10 weeks prior our inspection, and the assistant director. Both were available during this inspection.

Notice of inspection:

We gave the service 48 working hours’ notice of the inspection visit because we needed to be sure that they would be available to speak with us during the inspection.

Inspection site visit activity started on 18 March 2019 and ended on 27 March 2019. We visited the office location on these two dates to see the assistant director, business manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures.

What we did:

Before the inspection, we reviewed all the information we held about the service including previous inspection reports and notifications received by the CQC. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to tell us about by law. We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return. This is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to decide which areas to focus on during our inspection. We requested and received feedback on the service from the local safeguarding teams and commissioners.

During the inspection, we spoke with three people using the service and seven relatives of people using the service. We spoke with eleven staff; this included the assistant director, business manager, quality assurance manager, information governance manager, human resources advisor, care coordinators and care workers. We looked at care records for nine people using the service including support plans and risk assessments. We analysed three medicine administration records. We reviewed training, recruitment and supervision records for three staff including recent observations of their competencies. We looked at various policies and procedures and reviewed the quality assurance and monitoring systems of the service.

After the inspection, we exchanged emails with the assistant director for additional evidence and updates on the actions being taken by the provider following this inspection.

The report includes evidence and information gathered by the inspector manager, inspector and assistant inspector. Details are in the key questions below.

Updated 2 May 2019

Beckside Court, known as Locala Homecare, is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses in the community. It provides a service to older adults, including people living with long term conditions including frailty and dementia, who require ongoing support, support after a discharge from hospital and short term support while waiting for another provider. At the time of this inspection, 89 people were being supported by the service and were in receipt of the regulated activity, ‘personal care’.

People's experience of using this service:

¿ People and their relatives told us staff were caring and provided a service that made them feel safe, promoted their independence and had a positive impact in their lives.

¿ We found that the service had deteriorated in some domains since our last inspection. However, the domains relating to caring and effective have remained the same.

¿ The service met the characteristics of requires improvement in three out of the five key questions.

¿ We found two breaches of the regulations. One breach in relation to good governance because of lack of consistency in the quality of records relating risks to people’s care, support required and their consent. Management's oversight has not always been robust in how risks to people and medicines were managed by the service. We found a second breach because the provider failed to notify the CQC of safeguarding incidents.

¿ The management of risks was not always consistent. We found known risks to people’s care were not always identified in their risk assessments.

¿ Medicines were not always managed safely. The provider had identified in their internal audits that this was an area that required improvement and actions were being taken to address the issues. We made a recommendation about medicines.

¿ The provider had several systems in place to monitor the quality of the service but their effectiveness was not always consistent. The provider had identified some areas that required improvement however, other areas such as the recording and monitoring of risk associated to people’s care and the lack of submission of statutory notifications had not been identified before this inspection.

¿ The service had a registered manager in place but the day to day running of the service was the responsibility of the business manager. We found management’s oversight of accidents and incidents and compliance with legal requirements was not always robust.

¿ Most people and relatives told us care was provided by a regular team of staff.

¿ People and relatives told us they had been involved in setting up and reviewing their care and were confident that any concerns raised to the provider would be appropriately acted upon.

¿ Staff told us they enjoyed their job and most of them felt well supported through regular supervision and assessments of their competency and training.

¿ The provider had developed several links with the community and partnerships to support care provision and service development.

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

Ratings at last inspection:

At our last inspection the service was rated good overall. Our last report was published on 16 September 2016.

Why we inspected:

This inspection was part of our scheduled plan of visiting services to check the safety and quality of care people received.

Enforcement:

Information relating to the action the provider needs to take can be found at the end of this report.

Follow up:

We will continue to monitor the service to ensure that people received safe, high quality care.

Further inspections will be planned for future dates. We will follow up on any breaches of regulations at our next inspection.