Supportive Care Services Ltd

Supportive Care Services, is a is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to people in their own homes. The service was supporting 7 people with personal care at the time of our inspection. The service was providing support to children, older and younger adults, learning disabilities; autism; mental health conditions and physical disabilities.

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

There was a lack of provider oversight which meant risks to people’s safety had not been identified and responded to appropriately. Systems to monitor the quality and safety of the service were not effective, this placed people at risk of harm.

The provider's recruitment practices were not safe or robust, which meant people were at risk of being supported by unsuitable staff. Records had not been completed in relation to known risks to people or plans developed for managing these risks.

People who were known to express emotional distress did not have proactive behaviour strategies in their care records. This meant they did not provide detail on the specific actions staff should take to ensure

practices were least restrictive to the person and reflective of a person's best interests.

Staff training was inconsistent, and people were not always supported by staff who had all the skills and knowledge to meet their needs. For example, epilepsy training and catheter care. When people required medicines to be administered, there was no information about how people should be supported to take these safely.

The lack of systems and processes meant the provider had failed to identify the areas for improvement found at this inspection including the care planning, risk assessments, staff training and safe recruitment processes.

People and relatives we spoke with said they felt safe with the care provided and staff felt supported by the provider.

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 11 October 2021 and this is the first inspection.

We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the Safe key question. We look at this in all care home inspections even if no concerns or risks have been identified. This is to provide assurance that the service can respond to COVID-19 and other infection outbreaks effectively.

We have found evidence that the provider needed to make improvements

You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.

Enforcement

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

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 6 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.