Archived: Safer Care Community Services

Updated 22 July 2015

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, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Before our focused inspection, we reviewed the information we held about the service. We spoke to the local contracts and commissioning teams that commissioned the service on behalf of the people using the service.

We undertook a focused inspection of Safer Care Community Services on 9 June 2015. The inspection was carried out by two inspectors. On the day of the inspection we spoke with the provider, registered manager, care co-ordinator and four care workers. After the inspection we spoke on the phone with two relatives of the people that used the service. We also visited two people in their homes, two relatives and a friend of a person who used the service. We looked at 12 care files, two care folders in people’s homes, daily records, training records, and policies and procedures for the service.

Updated 22 July 2015

This focussed inspection took place on June 9 2015 and was announced. We informed the provider one day in advance of our visit that we would be inspecting. This was to ensure there was somebody at the location to facilitate our inspection. This focussed inspection took place to look into concerns raised by local authority commissioning teams around safeguarding, appropriate training for staff and that care plans for people were not personalised.

The service is a domiciliary care service that provides support with personal care to people living in their own homes. At the time of our inspection the service was providing care to 22 adults and 16 children.

There was a registered manager employed at the service. 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.

Staff did not always have the most appropriate information to meet people’s current care needs because the provider did not ensure care records were person-centred and reflected people’s personal preferences. The care plans were not personalised as they did not state the name of the person receiving care and gave no personal preferences, methods of communication, guidance and interests to support staff to provide personalised care.

Systems were in place to help ensure people were safe. Staff had undertaken training about safeguarding adults and had a good understanding of their responsibilities with regard to this. Risk assessments were in place which provided information about how to support people in a safe manner.

Staff received regular training and were knowledgeable about their roles and responsibilities. They had the skills, knowledge and experience required to support people with their care and support needs. People and their relatives said that the service responded to any concerns or complaints.

We found one breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see what action we asked the provider to take at the back of the full version of this report.