Hope Care Agency

Updated 30 December 2022

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 Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by one inspector and an Expert by Experience. An Expert by Experience is a

person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

Service and service type

This service 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

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because we needed to be sure that the registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection. Inspection activity started on 21 November 2022 with calls to people receiving care and their family members. We visited the office on 28 November 2022. We continued to gather information and feedback up until 6 December 2022.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service including complaints and notifications we received from the service. We asked for feedback from the local authorities who commission the care and support people receive. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return. This is information providers are required to send us with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with the registered manager and the office manager. We made calls to 4 people receiving care and 7 family members to get their feedback on the service. All staff were sent a questionnaire and we received completed responses from 5 members of staff. We also made calls to 2 members of staff to gather their feedback about the service. We reviewed a range of records including care and support plans for 5 people and the recruitment records for 6 members of staff. We also looked at training data and quality assurance records for the service.

Updated 30 December 2022

About the service

Hope Care Agency is a domiciliary care service which provides personal care to people living in their own homes. 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 there were 21 people receiving care and support for personal care.

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

We found issues with the management of safety. Risks to people’s health and wellbeing were not always assessed, and care plans lacked essential detail on how risks should be mitigated. People’s medicines were not always managed safely in line with current best practice guidelines. Care plans contained inaccurate information about the level of support people needed to take their medicines. The provider did not always follow safe recruitment processes.

The provider’s quality assurance systems were not sufficiently robust and had not identified the issues we found with risk management, medicines and recruitment. Care records and medicine records were not always checked by a senior member of staff to identify issues. The systems in place to ensure people received their care visits as planned were was not robust and the risk of failed visits had not been adequately assessed and/or mitigated.

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 this service was good (report published 13 September 2017).

Why we inspected

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

This focused report covers the key questions Safe and Well-Led. Ratings from the previous comprehensive inspection for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection. The overall rating for the service has changed from good to requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection.

Enforcement

We have identified breaches in relation to safe care and treatment, the recruitment of staff and good governance. We have sent a Regulation 17(3) letter to the provider in relation to their failure to effectively operate systems and processes to assess, monitor and improve the quality and safety of the services provided. A Regulation 17(3) Letter stipulates the improvements needed to meet breaches of regulation, seeks an action plan explaining what the provider will do to make improvements.

Follow up

We will meet with the provider to discuss how they will implement their action plan and make the required changes to ensure they improve their rating to at least good. We will work alongside the provider and the local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.