- Homecare service
Around the Clock Healthcare - Head Office
Assessment report published 24 March 2025
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of assessment: 14 January to 7 February 2025. The service is a care at home service supporting children and adults. Not everyone who received support required assistance with personal care. At the time of assessment 3 children and young people under 18 received personal care in their family homes. No one was using supported living at the time of assessment.
Medicines processes and oversight were not safe. Audits did not take place on key areas of the service to identify and drive improvements. Risk assessments did not provide enough information about known risks and how staff should provide care which reduced these. Some risk assessments were not in place. Some areas of recruitment processes required strengthening. Not all training records were provided during the assessment for review. There was no evidence in care records of people's consent to care and treatment and some areas of people’s care plans required additional information.
Staff knew how to report incidents and concerns. Staff usually arrived on time and always stayed for the length of time allocated to the calls. Staff received an induction and shadowed experienced staff as part of their learning. Staff were kind and caring to the people they supported and worked well together as a team. Positive feedback was received about the culture within the service and staff felt able to speak up. The management team were always available when needed.
We found 2 breaches of regulation in relation to people's safe care and treatment and the governance of the service. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.
We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted.
People's experience of this service
We spoke to the relatives of children and young people who received support. Relatives provided positive feedback about the care and support delivered by staff. They felt staff were well trained, knowledgeable about the needs of people they were supporting and delivered safe care. We were told that staff were caring in their approach. Staff respected the privacy and dignity of the young people they were supporting, sought their consent and offered choices. Relatives spoke positively about the management team who were approachable, available and responded promptly. Relatives felt able to raise any issues and knew these would be taken seriously and resolved.