Archived: Omega Integrated Care Limited

Omega Integrated Care Limited is a home care agency for adults including people living with dementia. At the start of our inspection the service was providing care to seven people. At the end of our inspection this had reduced to three people. All people using the service received support with 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

People did not benefit from a well-led service. We received mixed feedback from people and their relatives about the management of the service. This ranged from serious concerns about staff training and conduct including the registered manager’s own abilities and professionalism, to positive feedback about the registered manager’s supportive approach and a staff member’s punctuality.

We found effective systems were not established or operated to monitor the quality and safety of the service, manage risks, or safeguard people from avoidable harm. Medicines were not safely managed to ensure people always received their medicine as prescribed.

People were not always supported by trained or experienced staff. The provider failed to ensure appropriate recruitment checks were completed to check staff were of good character, prior to their employment.

People were not supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff did not always support them in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service did not consistently support good practice.

People did not experience holistic assessments or reviews of their needs. Care plans did not always provide appropriate guidance for staff to meet people’s health, nutrition and hydration needs, or their end of life wishes. Care plans did not clearly identify what support people needed and what they could do for themselves.

We received both positive and negative feedback from people and relatives about whether staff protected people’s dignity and treated them with respect. For example, one person told us a staff member was caring and good company. However, other feedback included “[staff] social skills are not good” and staff were not “compassionate”.

We found complaints were not well managed and people did not receive information about their rights or how to complain. The service did not notify the Care Quality Commission of certain events as required. This meant we could not check the service took appropriate action to anticipate and respond to concerns and risks to people.

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

Rating at last inspection

This service was registered with us on 8 April 2020 and this is the first inspection.

Why we inspected

The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about the service in relation to missed care visits which put people’s safety at risk. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks.

We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the further details in all domains of this full report.

The provider did not take appropriate action to effectively address concerns or mitigate risks to people that were identified by inspectors.

Enforcement

We have identified breaches in relation to the provider’s governance, the management of risks and protection from abuse, how people are supported to meet their nutritional needs and treated with respect. Breaches were also identified in relation to people’s needs and preferences being assessed and reviewed, fit and proper staff employed and sufficient numbers of suitably trained staff. Other breaches include, staff use of equipment, management of complaints and notifying the Care Quality Commission of certain events.

We had serious concerns about the impact of poor risk management, governance and staffing upon people's safety. Therefore, during our inspection, 25 November 2021, we decided to impose urgent conditions upon the service. These conditions restricted the service from providing care to new people, without our permission. We also imposed conditions upon the service to provide us with evidence about actions taken to improve people's safety. The service did not submit evidence within the set timeframes and evidence submitted was insufficient to comply with conditions. We took this into consideration as part of our inspection.”

Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.

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 continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.

Special Measures:

The overall rating for this service is ‘Inadequate’ and the service is therefore in ‘special measures’. This means we will keep the service under review and, if we do not propose to cancel the provider’s registration, we will re-inspect within six months to check for significant improvements.

If the provider has not made enough improvement within this timeframe and there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall rating, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures. This will mean we will begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will usually lead to cancellation of their registration or to varying the conditions the registration.

For adult social care services, the maximum time for being in special measures will usually be no more than 12 months. If the service has demonstrated improvements when we inspect it and it is no longer rated as inadequate for any of the five key questions it will no longer be in special measures.