Amicus Homecare Ltd

Amicus Homecare Ltd is a care at home service providing personal care to people. The service provides support to people in their own home. At the time of our inspection there were 41 people using the service.

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

People thought they were supported by kind and caring staff. However, improvements were required in several areas across the service. This included, learning lessons and records in relation to medicine management.

The provider had recently introduced several digital systems. This had led to gaps in people’s care records including a lack of assessing risks. Management systems were not embedded or effective to identify concerns found during the inspection. There were short falls in auditing, reporting and systems to protect people from abuse.

Small improvements were required with recruitment checks and staff supervisions. The systems to listen to staffs’ views and those of people who use the service had not been utilised for over a year. Although, people and their relatives had met the registered manager and were positive about them.

Systems to stop infections spreading including the use of gloves, aprons and masks were in place. The management were proud they had avoided any large COVID-19 outbreaks during the pandemic. They were also positive they were trying to support the crisis in health care by increasing how many people could be supported.

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

Rating at last inspection and update

The last rating for this service was good (published 20 July 2018).

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to the management of medicines, governance systems, knowledge of the management around health and social care and staffing issues. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has changed from good to requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection.

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

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Amicus Homecare Ltd on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Enforcement and Recommendations

We have identified breaches in relation to medicine records, management systems in the service, safe care and treatment and systems protecting people from potential abuse at this inspection.

Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats in the community. It provides a service to older adults. At the time of our inspection the service was supporting 10 people.

Not everyone using Amicus Homecare receives a regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided.

There was a registered manager in post. 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.

People we spoke with were very satisfied with the service they received. They told us staff were caring and reliable and they were confident their visit would always take place on time. Everyone using the service knew the registered manager and was complimentary about her.

People felt safe with staff and told us they were competent and respected their privacy and dignity.

Staff enjoyed working for the agency and received support, training and supervision. They told us they had enough time to deliver a good standard of care and did not feel rushed.

People’s care was delivered in the way they preferred. The provider had developed comprehensive care plans which took into account people’s personalities, history, likes and dislikes.

The service was well organised and had effective systems in place to manage quality and performance.