Prudent Domiciliary Care Limited (PBG)

On this page

• Overview
• Shared direction and culture
• Capable, compassionate and inclusive leaders
• Freedom to speak up
• Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion
• Governance, management and sustainability
• Partnerships and communities
• Learning, improvement and innovation

At our last assessment we rated this key question Inadequate. At this assessment the rating has changed to Requires Improvement. This meant the service management and leadership was inconsistent. Leaders and the culture they created did not always support the delivery of high-quality, person-centred care. We found 1 continued breach of regulation in governance. Audits were not always identifying concerns, and the management of care calls was not robust. People did not always feel their complaints were listened to. However, people and staff said there had been improvements in the leadership of the service.

This service scored 46 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The leaders did not always have a clear shared vision and did not always understand the challenges and the needs of people. For example, we saw from rotas that people’s call times were not consistent. People told us they did not always know when the call was taking place or who their carer would be. However, people also told us they had seen improvements since the last assessment. They said they felt staff were kind and compassionate. Staff fed back passionately about the care being delivered to people and spoke fondly of people they were supporting.

Whilst there were staff who told us they felt very supported and valued there were others that felt the communication from the office leaders could be improved upon. One member of staff told us, “They don’t really get back to you, might send a message on [electronic care system], which you can’t respond to, so you have to call the office. They don’t contact you; they wait for you to phone them.”

People did not always feel they could speak up and that their voice would be heard. There were mixed responses from people about whether they felt their concerns and complaints were listened to by leaders and action taken to make improvements. The registered manager told us 1 person had raised complaints however the majority of these were not recorded on the complaints record. We were not able to determine whether appropriate action had been taken to resolve them. Staff told us they were able to speak up and were asked for their feedback during staff meetings.

The systems in place to monitor the quality and safety of the care and support people received was not robust. Although we saw audits had increased since the last assessment, these were not always identifying the shortfalls we found. For example, we found visit notes were not always detailed around the care being delivered. However, a recent audit of the same care notes had not identified this. People told us they were contacted to ask for feedback, and we saw this was recorded in people’s care records. We saw that unannounced spot checks took place in people’s homes to check on the quality of care.

We did not look at Partnerships and communities during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Well-led.

The service did not always focus on continuous learning, innovation and improvement across the organisation. We saw from the incidents and complaints records, there was a lack of information on any learning from these.