Supreme Care Services Limited

Updated 31 August 2023

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection was conducted by 1 inspector and 2 Experts by Experience. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

Service and service type

Supreme Care Services Limited is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes.

Registered manager

This service is required to have a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

We gave the service 48 hours of the inspection. This was because we needed to be sure that the managers would be in their offices to support the inspection.

Inspection activity started on 20 July 2023 and ended on 25 July 2023. We visited the provider’s offices on the last day of this inspection.

What we did before the inspection

We made telephone contact with 8 people using the service and 13 relatives about their experiences with Supreme Care Services Limited. We also received email feedback from partner agencies with this provider and staff who worked for them including, numerous local authority social care professionals and 7 care staff. We reviewed all the information we held about the provider including, notifications we had received from the service. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

The provider was not asked to complete a Provider Information Return (PIR) prior to this inspection. A PIR is information providers send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.

During the inspection

We spoke in-person with the registered manager and the quality assurance and compliance manager during our site visit.

Records we looked at as part of this inspection included, 10 people’s care plans, 6 staff files in relation to their recruitment, multiple medicines records, and a variety of other documents relating to the providers’ overall management and governance systems.

After we visited the provider’s offices, we continued to seek clarification from them to validate evidence found. We requested the provider send us additional evidence after our inspection in relation to staff training and supervision and the providers most recent internal quality assurance audit. We received the information which was used as part of our inspection.

Updated 31 August 2023

About the service

Supreme Care Services Limited is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to people living in their own homes. At the time of our inspection 140 people were receiving personal care at home from this provider. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

People receiving a home care service and their relatives told us they were happy with the standard of care and support provided by Supreme Care Services Limited. A person said, “I am happy with the home care service I receive. My carers [staff] are always nice and polite, and come on time.” A relative added, “They [staff] treat my [family member] like a friend and we are 100 percent satisfied with the care he is getting. The carers [staff] never miss a visit or rush him, and always stay the agreed amount of time.”

At our last inspection, we found the provider had failed to ensure they notified us without delay about the occurrence of safeguarding incidents, appropriately maintained new staffs induction training records and communicated effectively with people outside of normal office hours.

At this inspection, we found enough improvements had been made. The provider had notified us without delay about all the safeguarding incidents that had happened in the last 6 months since their last inspection, appropriately maintained staffs induction training records and now effectively communicated with people who contacted them outside of normal office hours.

People continued to receive consistently good-quality and safe personal care from a small core group of staff who were familiar with their needs, preferences and daily routines. Staff knew how to prevent and manage risks people might face. The fitness and suitability of prospective new staff was thoroughly assessed and checked.

People continued to be protected against the risk of avoidable harm by staff who knew how to keep them safe. Medicines systems were well-organised, and people received their prescribed medicines as and when they should. People were confident any concerns they raised would be listened to and dealt with appropriately. Staff followed current best practice guidelines regarding the prevention and control of infection including, those associated with COVID-19. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

People were complimentary about the way the office-based managers and senior staff team ran the service, and how approachable they all were. Complaints, concerns, accidents, incidents, and safeguarding issues were appropriately reported, investigated, and recorded. The provider promoted an open and inclusive culture, which sought the views of people, their relatives, and staff. People had up to date, detailed, person-centred care plans in place, which were routinely assessed, monitored, and reviewed. The provider worked in close partnership with other health and social care professionals and agencies to plan and deliver people's packages of care at home.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection and update

The last rating for this service was good overall (published 12 January 2023), but remained requires improvement for the well-led key question.

Why we inspected

We conducted an announced focused inspection of this service in December 2022 and made recommendations for the provider to improve. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve on how they notified us about safeguarding incidents, kept new staffs induction training records and communicated with people outside of normal office hours.

We undertook this focused inspection to check they had followed their action plan and to confirm they had improved. This report only covers our findings in relation to the key questions safe and well-led, which contain those recommendations.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has remained good and the well-led key question has changed from requires improvement to good.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Supreme Care Services Limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect. If we receive any concerning information, we may inspect sooner.