Archived: Maxnom Care Agency

Updated 29 July 2015

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, to look at the overall quality of the service and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This inspection was announced and took place on 15 May 2015. We gave 48 hours’ notice of the inspection because we needed to make sure that the manager available. The inspection team consisted of one inspector who visited the service to carry out the inspection and then on the 18 May 2015 we telephoned people who used the service and staff.

Before we visited, we reviewed information we held about the service including statutory notifications that had been submitted. We spoke with the monitoring officer for the local authority and reviewed their report. Statutory notifications include information about important events, which the provider is required to send us.

During our inspection we spoke with two people who used the service and three relatives, we also talked to three staff members and the provider. We looked at two care records and two staff files. We were not able to review many documents such as audits and service plans as these were not available to us during and after our inspection.

Updated 29 July 2015

This inspection took place on the 15 May 2015 and was announced. We told the provider two days before our visit that we would be coming to make sure that the provider would be available.

Maxnom Care Agency is a domiciliary care service registered to provide personal care to people living in their own homes. There were six people receiving care at the time of our visit.

The location the service was operating from had moved from the address on the provider’s registration with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). However, the provider did not inform CQC about the changes, which meant that they were in breach of the conditions of their registration. They provider has since submitted an application to amend their registration.

We found that many of the records we requested at this inspection were not available. The provider told us that this was because the records had been removed from the office by an ex-employee.

The provider when recruiting new staff did not use safe systems.

People did not always receive their calls on time

Staff were aware of their responsibility to protect people from harm or abuse.

Staff received training but this did not cover all areas to meet people’s individual needs.

Medicines were not safely managed.

Staff were knowledgeable about the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005). Staff gained consent from people whenever they could and where people lacked capacity, we saw that arrangements were in place for staff to act in their best interests.

People were not always provided with appropriate care.

People were not always treated with dignity and respect.

There were no risk assessments in people’s care plans and one person did not have a care plan.

The provider had a complaints policy and people we spoke with knew how to complain. However not all complaints had been investigated or documented.

The provider did not have effective quality assurance monitoring in place to monitor the service for safety and quality and to recognise areas that required improvement.

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