Archived: Links View Extra Housing Scheme

Updated 5 October 2016

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 carried out on 11 August 2016 by one adult social care inspector. We were unable to give notice of our inspection as the agency had not updated us when they changed their contact details.

Prior to our visit we looked at any information we had received about the agency including any contact from people using the service or their relatives and any information sent to us by the agency.

During the inspection we spoke with seven of the people receiving a service from Links View. This included speaking individually with two people and holding a meeting with a further five people. We also spoke with four members of staff including the team leader who was in charge of the service on the day of our inspection.

We looked at five care plans and medication records relating to people supported by the agency; we looked at recruitment records for four members of staff and at a sample of records relating to staff training and recruitment. We also looked at records relating to complaints and quality assurance and other records relating to the running of the service.

Updated 5 October 2016

This inspection was carried out on 11 August 2016. We were unable to give notice of our inspection as the agency had not updated us when they changed their contact details.

Links View Extra Housing Scheme is a branch of Mears Care Limited (the provider), they are a domiciliary care agency providing personal care support to people living in their own home. This branch is registered with the Care Quality Commission as a separate location and is known as Links View Extra Housing Scheme.

Links View is based in an extra care living facility in the Woolton area of Liverpool. The facility is a block of flats providing extra care support for people. At the time of our inspection there were 41 people living in the flats 38 of whom received support from the agency. Links View did not provide support to anybody living outside of this facility.

The agency did not have a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) 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 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run. The previous registered manager had left in June 2016. Staff told us that there had been four managers since January 2015; two of whom had been registered with CQC.

During the inspection we spoke with seven of the people receiving a service from Links View. We also spoke with four members of staff including the team leader who was in charge of the service on the day of our inspection. We looked at a range of records including care records, staff records and records relating to quality assurance of the service.

At this inspection we found two breaches of regulations. This was because medicines were not always properly and safely managed and systems were ineffective at assessing, monitoring and improving the quality of the service .

You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.

People’s medication was not always managed safely. No system was in place for checking stocks of people’s medication and for supporting people to return unused medications. This increased the risk of medication errors occurring.

The service did not have a registered manager and had had a number of managers within the past two years. Staff felt demoralised by the number of changes to the senior management team within a short time and did not always feel supported to undertake training relevant to their role.

Systems for checking the quality of the service were not always effective at identifying areas of improvement and planning how to improve the service people received.

The way in which information about the day to day running of the agency was shared with people was not always suitable for the people they supported.

People supported by the agency and staff were not aware of how flexible or otherwise the agency could be in meeting people’s care needs at times other than those listed within their care plan.

Systems for supporting people to complain or raise a concern were not always effective at capturing peoples’ concerns and pro-actively dealing with them.

People were supported by staff who they liked and were familiar with and sufficient staff worked at the agency to provide the support people needed in a timely manner. Safe recruitment procedures were in place and followed to ensure staff were suitable to work with people who may be vulnerable.

People said they felt safe with the support provided to them by the agency. Staff had received training in recognising and reporting potential and actual abuse and polices were in place to guide them on the actions to take if they had any concerns.

Care plans contained up-to-date information on the support people needed and this had been discussed and agreed with the person. People received the support they needed with their personal and health care, preparing meals and making decisions.