Archived: Universal Care Services Leicester

Updated 31 October 2017

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.

We undertook an announced focused inspection of Universal Care Services on 13 September 2017. This inspection was carried out to check that improvements to meet legal requirements planned by the provider after our 15 February 2017 inspection had been made. This is because the service was not meeting the legal requirements of Regulation 12, Safe Care and Regulation 17, Good Governance.

The inspection team consisted of one inspector.

We also reviewed the notifications we had been sent and the action plan from the provider to meet the breaches of regulations from the last inspection. Notifications are changes, events or incidents that providers must tell us about.

We contacted commissioners for health and social care, responsible for funding some of the people who used the service and asked them for their views about the agency. The local authority commissioning unit stated that there had been issues with regard to meeting the needs of people using the service, but once this had been brought to the attention of the service, the registered manager had worked to ensure that the service improved so that it could meet people’s needs.

During the inspection we spoke with six people who used the service and six relatives. We also spoke with the registered manager, the regional manager, and four care workers.

We looked in detail at the care and support provided to four people who used the service, including their care records, and audits which checked whether people were provided with a quality service.

Updated 31 October 2017

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of this service on 23 February 2017. Breaches of legal requirements were found. After the comprehensive inspection, the provider wrote to us to say what they would do to meet legal requirements in relation to the breach.

We undertook this focused inspection to check that they 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 (location's name) on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Universal Care Services – Leicester provides personal care to people living in their own homes. On the day of the inspection the registered manager informed us that 41 people were receiving a personal care service from the agency.

This inspection took place on 13 September 2017. The inspection was announced as we needed to be sure that someone was available to carry out the inspection with us.

At our last inspection in 23 February 2017 the service was not meeting regulations with regard to having systems in place to ensure quality services. We followed up these issues and found some improvements had been made, though further improvements were needed to show that people did receive a quality service.

A registered manager was in place. 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.

Risk assessments were not consistently in place to protect people from risks to their health and welfare.

Calls to provide care to some people were not always at the agreed and assessed times, which meant people's safety had not been comprehensively promoted to ensure they received care at the times they needed.

People and relatives we spoke with told us they thought the service ensured that people received safe personal care from staff.

Most people and relatives were satisfied with how the service was run, though there were concerns about missed care calls and calls not being on time. Not all staff felt they were supported in their work by the senior management of the service.

Notifications of concern had been reported to us, as legally required, to enable us to consider whether we needed to carry out an early inspection of the service. Management had not comprehensively carried out audits in order to check that the service was meeting people's needs and to ensure people were provided with a quality service.

The service was still in breach of one of the regulations of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and remains rated as Requires Improvement. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report