The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Sentricare Birmingham inadequate for a second time following an inspection in December and January.
Sentricare Birmingham is a domiciliary care service that provides personal care to people living in their own homes. The service provides support to children and adults, some who are living with dementia, learning disabilities, autism, mental health conditions, physical disabilities and sensory impairments.
The inspection was carried out to follow up on concerns found at a previous inspection when this provider was rated inadequate and placed into special measures.
Following this inspection, the overall rating for the service remains inadequate, and the areas of safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led also remain inadequate.
Lorraine Tedeschini, CQC’s director of operations in the midlands, said:
“When we inspected Sentricare Birmingham, it was disappointing to see little improvement had been made since we last inspected, with people continuing to receive poor care which placed them at risk of harm.
“Since the last inspection, there was a continued failure by the provider to have adequate oversight of the service. We found multiple examples of safeguarding concerns which had not been identified, reported or actioned properly.
“For example, staff missed calls at people’s homes which resulted in them not receiving the correct level of support, receiving medications late or not at all, and missing meals and drinks which is totally unacceptable. No action has been taken to prevent this happening again which placed people at a continued risk of harm.
“Records showed that some people's care visits lasted for less than half the required time, and most people received calls late. When staff turned up at their homes, they didn’t always respect people’s privacy and dignity.
“For example, a relative told us a staff member was continually on their telephone during the support visit and weren’t engaging with the person at all.
“People and their relatives felt there was no point in making a complaint because no action was taken to resolve issues. One relative told us they had given up making complaints as nobody got back to them when they had spoken up in the past.
“We will continue to monitor the service closely to ensure the necessary improvements are made urgently to keep people safe and free from harm. If we are not assured people are receiving safe care, we will not hesitate to take further action.”
Inspectors found:
- People were at risk of abuse and neglect and were not consistently protected
- Incidents were not consistently audited, recorded or acted on. This meant people using the service were placed at risk from potential further incidents
- For people who were prescribed creams, we saw these were still not consistently included on the Medication Administration Records (MAR)
- We found that electronic records often had 'no outcome' for medicines as staff had not completed the records. This meant it was not possible to corroborate if medication had been given
- Risk assessments were either not in place or were not sufficiently detailed
- People and staff continued to be placed at risk as the provider could not be assured staff were following safe practices adhering to the correct use and disposal of PPE
- The provider's systems continued to be inadequate and were not robust enough to demonstrate recruitment was effectively managed.