Archived: Mears Care - Ealing

The last inspection was on the 17 March 2015 when we found breaches of four Regulations relating to safe care and treatment, good governance, the support of staff and the identifying, receiving and handling of complaints.

We undertook this inspection so we could look at whether the provider had made progressing in meeting these breaches. The inspection also took place because the Home Office Immigration Enforcement Department had found that some of the staff employed at the location were working illegally in the UK. This had resulted in a number of staff leaving the employment of the agency without any notice impacting on the service being provided. We wanted to make sure people’s needs were being met and the agency had plans in place to recover from this.

Mears Care-Ealing is an agency providing personal care and support to people who live in the own homes in the London Borough of Ealing. This location is a branch of a national organisation, Mears Care Limited. The Ealing branch provided a service to 127 people at the time of the inspection. The majority of people were older adults, some had dementia. There were also a small number of younger adults with a physical disability, acquired brain injury, learning disability or mental health needs.

There was a manager in post. He had started work at the location four weeks before our inspection. He was in the process of applying to be registered with the Care Quality Commission. 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 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The care people received had been affected by the sudden loss of staff in September. The manager and other senior staff also left around this time and this affected how the service was coordinated and managed. However, the new manager had been in post for four weeks at the time of our inspection and we could see that improvements had started. The impact of the loss of staff had been reduced as new staff had been employed.

Most people felt safe, although some people raised concerns about unfamiliar care workers, or care workers arriving late or not at all. The provider had introduced systems to reduce the risk of missed visits and to monitor visits. However, some people reported that visits were not always on time, and some people did not receive care as planned. This meant people were still at risk.

The staff had not received the supervision and support they needed since the incident in September 2015. The provider was starting to offer more support and supervision to all staff and there were plans for them to have regular supervision from senior staff.

People told us the care workers were kind, polite and caring.

People felt their complaints were responded to and investigated by the provider.

The provider had an action plan to address some of the areas of improvement.

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

We spoke with thirteen people who use the service who said that they were treated with dignity and respect by staff. People said they thought staff were trained to a good standard and the level of care was high. People had a care plan which reflected their assessed needs and most of the people we spoke with said they would contact Mears Care London office if they wished to report a concern about their care. The provider had an effective recruitment and selection procedure in place and there were sufficient staff to meet people's needs. People commented about the staff 'they are friendly and kind' and 'we're very well looked after.

Ealing local authority commissioned domiciliary care for people from Mears Care Ealing.

People received information about the service provided and were involved in the development and review of care plans and risk assessments. People were satisfied that their privacy and dignity were respected by staff and were pleased with the standard of care and support from their usual care workers. One person said 'I am very pleased with my care'. Another said 'they [staff] get to know my routines and what I need'.

However, people's relatives were not very pleased when the care was provided by replacement care workers. One of them said 'the usual care workers are very good and there is no problem when they are on duty'.

There were two areas where people were most dissatisfied. These were not being informed when there was a change in their care workers or not being informed when care workers were late. In these instances they were not sure who would provide their care and whether they would receive the care according to their care plans and at the time agreed.

Staff received training, supervision and appraisal to ensure they were appropriately supported to care for and support people to the necessary standard. The agency had quality management systems in place to monitor the quality of the service provided.