Archived: Age UK North Tyneside

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 and to pilot a new inspection process being introduced by CQC which looks at the overall quality of the service

We visited the on the 8, 9, 10, 16, 24 and 25 July 2014. We gave the provider 48 hours notice of the inspection to make sure that the relevant people we needed to speak with could be available.

The service was last inspected in January 2014 and was not in breach of any regulations at that time.

Age UK North Tyneside provides home care and housing support to 428 adults living in their own homes. Over 5000 visits a week are carried out by staff to support these people.

A registered manager was in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service and has the legal responsibility for meeting the requirements of the law; as does the provider.

There were safeguarding policies and procedures in place. Staff were knowledgeable about what actions they would take if abuse was suspected. One member of staff said, “I have never seen anything like that [abuse]. I would report it straight away.”

The registered manager was aware of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. There were policies and procedures in place and key staff had been trained. This helped ensure people were safeguarded from excessive or unnecessary restrictions being placed on them.

Safe recruitment procedures were followed and staff said that they undertook an induction programme which included shadowing an experienced member of staff. There were 189 staff employed and six team leaders had recently been recruited. These team leaders would help monitor people’s care and carry out important audits and checks.

People informed us they generally saw the same core group of care workers with whom they were happy. One person said, “They’re lovely lasses.” Some people and relatives explained that problems sometimes arose when their usual care workers were not available.

Staff assisted people to take their medicine. We found however, that medicines were not recorded appropriately. Care plans often did not contain an up to date list of medicines that people were taking. Staff documented “tablets taken” but it was not clear what medicine had been administered. We considered that people were not fully protected against the risks associated with medicines because an effective system to manage medicines was not in place.  

We found that care plans and risk assessments were not always detailed or up to date. This meant that staff did not always have information on what actions they should take to ensure people’s safety.

Staff were appropriately trained and told us they had completed training in safe working practices and were trained to meet the specific needs of people who used the service such as those who required specialist feeding techniques and those who had dementia.

Staff were knowledgeable about people’s needs and we saw that care was provided with patience and kindness and people’s privacy and dignity was respected. However, we noticed that care plans were not personalised and did not always contain people’s likes and dislikes or all the care which was provided.

A well-defined management structure was in place from the board down to the delivery teams. The board consisted of a Chief Executive and two executive directors together with12 Trustees. The Chairman and the Trustees had a wide depth and breadth of experience from the public and commercial sectors.

We found however, that certain aspects of the service were not monitored in a timely manner to highlight any concerns or issues. In addition, the provider had not notified us of certain changes and incidents which they were legally obliged to inform us.  

We found three breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2010. These related to medicines management, assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision and record keeping.

During and after our inspection, the provider drafted action plans, to inform us what actions they were going to take to improve with regards to medicines management and care records. They also submitted the necessary notifications with immediate effect.

You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of this report.