Recruit4care

Recruit4care is a domiciliary care agency which provides support and personal care to people living in their own home. 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. At the time of our inspection 16 people were receiving a regulated activity from this service.

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

Although people that received support from Recruit4care were happy with the care they received, we found shortfalls in the safety and management of the service which placed people at risk of harm.

People were at risk due to poor governance and record keeping at the service. The provider and registered person told us there were no formal quality assurance systems. This meant systems were not in place to identify areas for development and to ensure improvements were made.

Some records we requested were not available, meaning we could not be assured care had been provided in line with people's care assessments, plans, needs, wishes and choices. Risk assessments were not used to identify and reduce risks to people. Safe systems for the management of all prescribed medicines were not in place.

Necessary pre-employment checks had not been completed prior to staff commencing work with vulnerable people. Sufficient staff were employed and they had received appropriate training.

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; however, formal systems were not in place to assess people's mental capacity and ability to consent to care.

The registered person and provider acknowledged the above shortfalls during the inspection and agreed to introduced changes to improve the service.

People and their family members were all positive about the caring nature of the staff. People told us they were always treated with dignity and respect.

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

Rating at last inspection

This service was registered with us on 7 December 2020 and this was their first inspection.

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection based on the date the service was registered and when it commenced providing a personal care service to people living in their own homes.

Enforcement and Recommendations

We have identified breaches in relation to the safe recruitment of staff, risk assessments, mental capacity, medicines management and the governance and quality monitoring of the service.

Please see the actions we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.

Follow up

We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.