The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Clarity Homecare Wolverhampton as inadequate and placed it into special measures to keep people safe following an inspection in September.
Clarity Homecare Wolverhampton, run by RGHarmony Care Limited, is a domiciliary care agency that provides personal care to younger and older adults with dementia, sensory or physical disabilities and mental health conditions. The service supported 18 people at the time of the inspection. This was CQC’s first inspection of the service since it was registered.
Inspectors identified four breaches of regulation related to safe care and treatment, safeguarding, staff training and overall management of the service.
CQC has rated how safe, effective and well-led the service is as inadequate, and how caring and responsive it is as requires improvement.
CQC has also placed the service in special measures meaning it will be kept under close review by CQC to keep people safe while improvements are being made. It has also begun the process of taking regulatory action to address the concerns which Clarity Homecare Wolverhampton has the right to appeal.
Amanda Lyndon, CQC’s deputy director of adult social care in the west midlands, said:
“During our inspection of Clarity Homecare Wolverhampton, we found a service where leaders didn’t fully understand the risks people faced in their own homes. The service had care plans and risk assessments that either hadn’t been kept up to date or didn’t exist, so staff were often working without the information they needed to keep people safe.
“We found this affected the care and support people received. Staff didn’t always manage medicines safely, and gaps in record keeping meant they couldn’t always show people were getting the right medicine at the right time. The home's records suggested one person received a patch meant to be changed weekly three times in a single week, and the systems in place hadn't picked this up. We also found care plans didn’t always properly reflect some people’s health conditions, which put them at risk of not getting the support they needed.
“However, people and their relatives told us staff were kind, caring, arrived on time and treated them with compassion. Staff also told us they felt well supported by the management team. Despite this, we found the service didn’t meet expected standards of care, including a lack of basic record keeping and understanding of the care it provided.
“We’ve told leaders at Clarity Homecare Wolverhampton where they must improve. We’ll continue to monitor the service closely to make sure people are kept safe while this happens.”
Inspectors found:
- Staff gave inconsistent accounts of how they supported people living with dementia and people experiencing emotional distress, leaving them at risk of receiving inconsistent care.
- Leaders couldn’t show that staff had completed essential training, including in medicines management, safeguarding and mental capacity, so people couldn’t be sure staff had the right skills to support them safely.
- Leaders hadn’t carried out any audits of medicines, calls, health and safety or staff performance, so problems went unnoticed and unresolved.
- The service didn’t always refer people to health professionals when their needs changed, leaving some people without the specialist support they needed.
- The service didn’t assess whether people could consent to their care, including people living with dementia, so staff could not be sure they acted in people’s best interests.
- However, staff knew how to raise concerns and told inspectors they felt comfortable speaking up to the management team.