Archived: Allied Healthcare - London South

People we spoke with told us they were involved in the planning of their care. They had discussed their care with the provider when it first started and staff from the agency visited regularly to review their needs with them.

The majority of people we spoke with said that their carers understood their needs and carried out their jobs confidently and competently. Their care workers turned up on time and they were informed if there was any delay. When they were there they stayed for the allocated time. When people had replacement care workers they said they were satisfactory. Two people had, however, experienced unsatisfactory service and the provider allocated them a replacement care worker who they were happy with.

People told us that they felt safe with their carers. If they had any concerns they knew who to contact at the agency.

We spoke with the local authority commissioner of care services for the service who told us that from their own monitoring care planning was satisfactory. There were ongoing concerns about the volume of safeguarding casework and complaints which had arisen following a significant increase in the number of people care was provided to in 2012. However, the provider had appointed a safeguarding lead to manage the service's input to casework. The service commissioner felt that this had improved matters considerably and had enabled quicker completion of case reviews, based on better more timely information and support provided by the branch's safeguarding lead.

At our February 2012 inspection, the people we spoke with told us that they got a good standard of service and received the care and support they needed. A social care professional who had raised concerns previously told us that from their own monitoring of the service they had found improvements in several areas but further work needed to be done in other areas. We found that some of the concerns we identified previously had been addressed. In other areas some progress had been made but further improvement was necessary, particularly in record keeping.

In response to our previous inspection, the provider sent us an action plan to tell us what they were doing to make improvements. We visited the service on 31 July 2012 to see whether they had made these improvements.

On this occasion we did not speak with people who use the service to obtain their further views about the care and support they received. The focus of our inspection was on record keeping and the audit of records. However, we contacted one of the local authority commissioners of the care services provided by the branch who, following our previous inspection, had been carrying out regular monitoring of the service to secure improvements to meet its own quality standards. The authority told us that at their last monitoring visit in July 2012, they found that the branch had improved their medication management and record keeping systems.

At our latest inspection we found that the provider had implemented its action plan to address the concerns we identified previously. Further work was ongoing to ensure improvements that had been made were sustained but the provider was now meeting the essential standards of quality and safety.