Archived: Allied Healthcare Reading

Updated 9 February 2016

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.

This inspection took place on 27 October and 4 November 2015 and was unannounced. The provider was given 24 hours notice so to ensure that a senior member of staff was available in the office to assist in the inspection process, due to the location being a domiciliary care service.

The inspection was completed by one inspector. We gathered and reviewed information sent to us by the provider in the PIR (Provider Information Return), through local authority reports, past inspections and notifications received prior to the inspection.

Notifications are sent by the provider to the Care Quality Commission to advise us of any significant events in relation to the service. We also contacted the local authority care commissioners for feedback related to the service.

We spoke with six people who were supported by Allied Healthcare, as well as eight number of staff who are employed by the service.  This included the  registered manager, two field care supervisors, one co-ordinator, one office admin staff and two carers. We looked at six people’s care and support files and six staff member’s recruitment files. In addition we looked at documentation related to care support delivery, risk assessments, supervision records, quality assurance, recruitment documents, complaints, health and safety and training.

Updated 9 February 2016

The inspection was completed on 27 October and 4 November 2015. Allied Healthcare Reading is a domiciliary care service (DCS). A DCS offers specific allotted periods of care and support to a person within their own home. This inspection was announced so to be certain that someone would be in the office during the inspection process.

As a DCS the service is registered to provide personal care as a regulated activity. The total number of people that were provided personal care within the service at the time of the inspection were 64, although some people were supported with other aspects of their life, excluding personal care. The service offered a number of support packages with shortest calls consisting of 15 minute visits.

A registered manager had been in post since August 2015, although had been employed at the service since November 2014, within the capacity of manager. 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. The manager had been absent from the service for a significant period of time, resulting in office and mid level management raising concerns about the support mechanisms that had been in place in her absence.

People were not always kept safe by comprehensive recruitment processes, as the service failed to ensure a full employment history was obtained and that photos of staff were held on files.

The service was not completing audits of documentation related to personal care, general practice as well as service specific files.This led to inaccuracies being found in files that, had new staff been employed could have led to serious unresponsive and ineffective care being delivered.

Staff were offered comprehensive training, that had recently changed to being classroom based. All staff were up to date with training, however competency checks were in the process of being developed to determine the practice of the taught theory. As part of the induction process staff undertook ‘care coaching’, this involved shadowing experienced staff in the delivery of care. People told us that they felt safe with the staff, and happy that their dignity and choice was respected and maintained.

Complaints systems and incident accident trend monitoring systems were being used by the service so to prevent the probability of similar incidents occurring.

Safeguarding notifications had not been made appropriately to CQC or relevant authorities that were highlighted as safeguarding alerts by on call systems. This is a requirement of the registration regulations.

We found that the service was in breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regluated Activities) Regulations 2014, in several areas. The action we told the provider to take can be found at the end of the report.