Archived: Allforcare Trading Alomcare

Updated 28 April 2016

We carried out this focused 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.

We undertook an announced focused inspection of Allforcare Trading Alomcare on 23 February. This inspection was completed to check that improvements to meet legal requirements planned by the provider after our comprehensive inspection on 19 October 2015 had been made. We inspected the service against two of the five questions we ask about services: is the service safe, and is it well led? This was because the service was not meeting legal requirements in relation to these questions.

The inspection was undertaken by two inspectors.

During our inspection we looked at a range of documents including nine staff files, including three for recently recruited staff members, five care records, quality assurance records and policies and procedures. We also spoke with the provider, a member of the office team responsible for recruitment and the newly appointed deputy manager.

Before our inspection we reviewed the information we held about the home, this included the provider’s action plan, which set out the action they would take to meet legal requirements. We also spoke with the local authority quality assurance team.

Updated 28 April 2016

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of this Allforcare Trading Alomcare on 19 October 2016 when we found that there were continuing breaches of two regulations of The Health and Social Care Act 2014. We found that the provider had failed to maintain adequate quality assurance systems. They had also failed to ensure that satisfactory pre-employment checks were carried out prior to staff commencing work with people who used the service. Subsequent to this inspection we served warning notices to the provider requiring them to take action to meet the regulations 16 January 2016.

After the comprehensive inspection, the provider wrote to us to say what they would do to meet legal requirements in relation to the breaches.

We undertook this focused inspection on 23 February 2016 to check that the provider had followed their plan and to confirm that they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to those requirements. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Allforcare Trading Alomcare on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Allforcare Trading Alomcare is a domiciliary care agency that provides a range of care supports to adults and young people living in their own homes. At the time of our inspection the service provided personal care to 24 people.

The service had a registered 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 2014 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

At our focused inspection on the 23 February 2016, we found that the provider had followed their action plan and put in place a range of systems to address the breaches of service identified at our previous inspection. Monitoring of care plans had commenced, and there was evidence that spot checks and reviews of care had taken place for a number of people who used the service. Regular monitoring of the electronic care call system was in place and we were able to see how this corresponded with people’s care records.

Although we were satisfied that systems were now in place to ensure that the quality of the service was regularly monitored and reviewed, we noted that further improvements could be made. For example, some people who used the service had chosen not to use the electronic call system, and the provider had not established a means of monitoring their care calls other than through use of manual timesheets.

The procedures for staff recruitment had been updated and we saw that applications for references and criminal records checks had been made for newly recruited staff who had not yet commenced employment with the service. The provider told us that they were delivering training on the care certificate for staff in health and social care prior to new staff commencing work with people, as part of the process of ensuring their suitability for the work that they would be undertaking.

The provider had obtained satisfactory criminal records checks for all staff currently working at the service, and maintained records of these.