Archived: Professional Care Support Services Ltd

Updated 14 May 2016

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This inspection took place on 21 April 2016 and was announced. We gave the registered manager 48 hours’ notice to give them time to become available for the inspection. It was undertaken by a single inspector. This inspection was completed to check that improvements to meet legal requirements planned by the registered provider after our comprehensive inspection on 9 September 2015 had been made. We inspected the service against three of the five questions we ask about services: Is the service safe? Is the service effective? Is the service well-led? This is because the service was not meeting legal requirements in relation to those questions at that inspection.

Before our inspection we reviewed information we held about the service and the provider. During the inspection we spoke with the registered manager. We looked at four people’s care records, four staff recruitment records and records relating to the management of the service including quality audits. After the inspection we spoke with one person using the service and three relatives. We also spoke with three care workers.

Updated 14 May 2016

We carried out a comprehensive inspection of this service on 9 September 2015 at which four breaches of legal requirements were found in relation to safe care and treatment, recruitment, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) and good governance. This was because the provider had not suitably assessed and managed some risks to individuals. In addition staff were not always recruited through safe procedures. Staff did not have a good understanding of their responsibilities in relation to people’s capacity to make decisions and give consent and the quality assurance processes in place were ineffective to suitably assess, monitor and improve the service. After the inspection, the registered manager wrote to us with a plan for how they would meet the legal requirements in relation to these breaches.

We undertook this focused inspection on 21 April 2016. We checked the provider had followed their plan and made the improvements they said they would to meet legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to those requirements. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Professional Care Support Services Ltd on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Professional Care Support Services provides personal care and support to people in their own homes. The people who use the service included older people and people with a learning disability or a physical disability. There were eight people using the service at the time of our inspection. The service had a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

At this inspection the registered manager had still not reviewed specific risks to people, mainly related to their health conditions and had not put suitable management plans in place for staff to follow to mitigate any identified risks. However, when we raised our concerns with the registered manager they liaised with people, their relatives and health professionals immediately. The following day they had all the required documentation in place which they sent us for reference.

The registered manager had reviewed recruitment information held on file for all staff and outstanding documentation as required by law. This included evidence of checks of criminal records, previous employment and health conditions.

Care workers had a good understanding of their responsibilities in relation to the Mental Capacity Act (2005) such as the need to obtain people's consent before carrying out their care and how to assess if a person lacked capacity regarding a specific decision and how to support them make decisions if they did. This meant staff were working in accordance with legal requirements to protect people's rights in relation to their mental capacity.

The systems in place for the provider to assess, monitor and improve the service were not always effective because they had not always identified and resolved the issues we found at this, and the last inspection. You can see the action we asked the provider to take in relation to this at the back of this report.