Peoples Care Limited

Updated 9 November 2023

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

This inspection was carried out by 1 inspector and a Bengali interpreter. A Bengali interpreter was required because a considerable number of people using the service and their relatives could not communicate as effectively in English as it was not their first language.

Service and service type

Peoples Care Limited is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

This inspection was unannounced. The provider knew we would be returning on the second and third day of the inspection.

Inspection activity started on 26 September and ended on 20 October 2023. We visited the office location on 26, 28 September and 3 October 2023 to see the registered manager and to review a range of records related to the service.

We requested a range of further documents related to the inspection that was sent to us by the management team between 11 and 20 October 2023. We made calls to people who used the service, their relatives and care staff between 4 and 10 October 2023.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. This included any significant incidents that occurred at the service. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR), which was sent in on 7 December 2022. This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make.

We also reviewed the local authority quality monitoring visit reports, as they had carried out numerous home visits to people between 6 and 13 September 2023 in response to the allegations received about care not being provided. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We reviewed a range of records related to 25 people’s care and support. This included people’s care plans, risk assessments and medicines information. We reviewed 9 staff files in relation to recruitment, training and supervision. We reviewed records related to the management of the service, which included safeguarding incidents, complaints, staff timesheets, minutes of staff meetings and a range of policies and procedures.

We spoke with 4 staff members. This included the registered manager, the system support and monitoring officer and 2 care coordinators.

We also spoke with a number of care workers, which included face to face and via email and telephone. We asked the registered manager to share a questionnaire with all active care workers to give them an opportunity to provide feedback about their experience of working for the service. We received feedback from 26 care workers.

We contacted 27 people and managed to speak with 5 people and 11 relatives. We also spoke with 4 health and social care professionals who had experience of working with the service.

We continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence found after the inspection. We looked at further records related to people’s care, a training matrix and further quality assurance

Updated 9 November 2023

Peoples Care Limited is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. It provides a service to younger disabled adults and older people, some living with dementia.

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.

At the time of the inspection the provider was supporting 86 people with personal care.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

Although the issues we found did not directly impact the level of care and support people received, improvements were needed with the level of detail and information of the care records in place.

Key records related to people’s care and support lacked sufficient detail or were not available at the time of the inspection. Important information and guidance for care staff to follow related to people’s care and support was not always recorded or in place.

Safer recruitment practices were not always followed. The providers monitoring processes were not always effective as they had not picked up all the issues we found during this inspection. The provider had failed to notify us about all the incidents that had occurred across the service.

People were not consistently supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives as the policies and systems in the service were not always up to date. However, staff supported people in the least restrictive way possible.

People and their relatives were happy with how their care and support was being delivered. People had regular care staff where some had worked with people for many years. People told us they felt safe and staff had a good understanding of their needs.

People and their relatives told us the flexible nature of the care had a positive impact on their lives and helped them to remain as independent as possible.

People and their relatives praised the positive benefits of having staff who spoke their first language to aid communication and to understand their cultural needs.

People were supported by staff who felt valued and supported in their role. Staff spoke positively about the management team and felt proud working for the organisation.

People and their relatives were positive about the management of the organisation and told us the management team were available, flexible and worked hard to accommodate their needs.

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. We considered this guidance as there were people using the service who have a learning disability and or who are autistic.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for the service was good (published 30 March 2018).

Why we inspected

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

We had also received anonymous concerns in relation to allegations care was not being provided due to misuse of direct payments, but the funding authority was still being invoiced. A direct payment is the amount of money that the local authority has to pay to meet the needs of people and is given to them to have control and choice over who they choose to provide their care.

As a result, we shared this information with the relevant local authority Fraud Team and they carried out their investigation at the same time as our inspection.

We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from these allegations.

Enforcement and Recommendations

We have identified 3 breaches in relation to safe care and treatment, recruitment practices and good governance.

We have made two recommendations about how people’s communication needs are recorded and how the provider ensures they are working within the principles of The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA).

Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this 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 to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.