Around the Clock Healthcare - Head Office

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• 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 assessment for this newly registered service. This key question has been rated requires improvement. This meant the management and leadership was inconsistent. Leaders and the culture they created did not always support the delivery of high-quality, person-centred care.

The service was in breach of a legal regulation in relation to governance arrangements.

This service scored 61 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The provider had a shared vision, strategy and culture. This was based on transparency, equity, equality and human rights, diversity and inclusion, engagement, and understanding challenges and the needs of people and their communities. Staff provided positive feedback about the culture within the service. One member of staff said, “They are leading us well, heading in a good direction, they give us a sense that we are not just earning money, they are putting a purpose in our work that we are doing something important. They tell us to think of the people we support as our own family members. This gives us a good purpose.”

The provider was also the registered manager and the nominated individual of the service. The nominated individual is responsible for the oversight of the regulated activity. Unfortunately, the provider was unavailable during the assessment, but the compliance manager had access to all information and was able to facilitate the assessment. All feedback we received confirmed the management team were supportive and inclusive. They were contactable when needed and responded to issues brought to their attention. One staff member told us, “They are always trying to do their best.”

The provider fostered a positive culture where people felt they could speak up and their voice would be heard. A staff member said, “Do they have an open culture? That’s a big yes. I feel able to raise any concerns. Managers ask if there are any concerning issues of underlying things we are worried about.” Other staff shared similar views.

Systems were not in place to ensure staff received regular supervision and appraisal to support them in carrying out the duties and in meeting their learning and development needs. Team meetings had also lapsed in recent months. This meant the staff team did not have opportunities to come together on a regular basis to discuss issues, receive and share information. Systems were also not in place to gather feedback from staff to listen to their views and ideas. However, staff told us they used various communication channels to ensure information was shared on a day to day basis, which they found was effective.

The provider did not carry out audits in key areas of service provision such as medicines, care records, daily logs and call times, staff support and training. The provider had not identified the issues we found in this assessment which raised the risk of people of people receiving unsafe care or care which did not meet their current needs. The management team could not use information gathered in audits to drive improvements of the service and staff practice as they were not undertaken. For example, unsafe medicines practice including lack of documentation and errors in recording had not been identified. The provider had not identified that key risk assessments and care plans were absent for some areas of care provision. Staff regularly recorded daily notes of the tasks they were undertaking but the provider could not be assured that staff were recording effectively as they were not reviewing these in a structured way. The provider had not identified that the training matrix did not contain records of some key areas of training. We asked the provider for an action plan setting out what improvements they intended to make to the processes for management oversight, but we did not receive this during the assessment period.

The provider understood their duty to collaborate and work in partnership, so services worked smoothly for people. They did not record a log of communication with health and social care partners such as social workers or community nurses and planned to introduce this as an area of improvement. However, we did not find any negative impact because of this, and relatives provided positive feedback.

The provider was keen to develop and improve the service offered to people. They used an electronic care planning system and had commissioned an external audit of their recruitment processes in 2024. They were supportive of the assessment process and took on board suggestions offered. Accidents and incidents were recorded and looked into, as were complaints. We saw records of investigations undertaken when required which were clear and detailed.