Alcedo Care South Lakes

Alcedo Care South Lakes is a domiciliary care service, providing personal care and treatment of disease, disorder or injury to people living in their own homes. The service is managed from the registered office in Kendal and services are provided to people living in the South Lakes area. At the time of this inspection 19 people were receiving the regulated activities. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. 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

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

At the time of this inspection, the location did not care for anyone with a learning disability or for an autistic person. However, we assessed the care provision under Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, as it is registered as a specialist service for this population group.

Right Support:

Although people felt safe, some aspects of the safety of the service needed to be improved.

Safeguarding incidents were identified and shared with the local authority. However, not all of the incidents and allegations had been notified to us, as legally required.

Most risks relating to people's needs had been identified. However, some care records did not provide a detailed plan for managing the risks associated with some of the equipment people required such as bed rails and wheelchairs. Immediate action was taken by the registered manager during the inspection to rectify this. Systems were in place to record accidents and incidents. These were consistently monitored to identify any lessons learned, themes or trends.

Medicines were not always managed safely, and medicine audits were not always effective, for example, a topical medicine was out of date and had continued to be used by care staff. All staff told us they had been trained in the management of medicines and had been observed for competency when giving them. There were enough staff to adequately support the number of people using the service. Recruitment checks of suitability had been carried out by the provider.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. Consent to care and treatment had been obtained and where people lacked capacity relevant others had been involved in supporting people's decision making.

Right Care:

People received kind and compassionate care from staff who knew them well. People told us staff treated them with respect and dignity and were very caring towards them. Care plans demonstrated a person-centred approach. Records showed complaints were processed and responded to. End of life care where relevant was done co-working with the community nurses.

Training records demonstrated appropriate and relevant training was provided. Referrals were made to other healthcare services when necessary. People told us they thought the care they received was good and spoke very positively about the staff who supported them.

Right culture:

Quality monitoring and auditing systems were not always effective. A variety of regular audits had been undertaken. However, these were not always effective in highlighting the concerns we found with notifying us about of allegations of abuse, records for managing the risks associated with equipment and the safe management of medicines. This could put people at risk of not receiving safe and good quality care.

Electronic care planning and rota systems were used. People could access the electronic care planning system remotely to view information about their or their relative’s care. People’s views of their experience of the service were regularly gathered. People provided us with positive feedback about how the service was managed, the registered manager and care staff.

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 15 November 2022, and this is the first inspection.

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

Recommendations and breaches

We have identified a breach in relation to good governance and the systems and processes used for monitoring the oversight of the quality and safety of the service.

The provider and registered manager responded immediately during and after the inspection to address the completion of records about risks and improve the quality of the systems used for the monitoring the service in order to mitigate any further risks.

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

Follow up

We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.