Archived: Alphacare Northwest

This was an unannounced inspection.

Alphacare Northwest is a domiciliary care agency that provides personal care and support to people in their own homes. Alphacare Northwest is based in Anfield, a suburb of Liverpool, and provides care to people within Merseyside.

There was a registered manager in post at the time of our inspection. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission 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 service was last inspected in August 2015. The service was rated ‘Good’ overall. Before this inspection, we had received some concerns about this provider in relation to staff lateness and poor communication from the office staff. We discussed these complaints with the registered manager as part of our inspection processes.

We spoke to people who used the service. We received mixed responses concerning the appropriateness of the call times and the communication from the office if staff were either running late or there had been a change to people’s usual call times. We also viewed a number of complaints from people who used the service who were not happy with this aspect of the service. People also raised that consistency of staff was sometimes a problem for them. We saw that the registered manager had recently reviewed their processes to help improve the service for people.

We looked at the rota system the service had in place. We saw that there were enough staff employed by the service to cover all of the contracted hours.

There was a process in place to check and analyse incidents and accidents.

Staff were able to describe what course of action they would take if they felt someone was being harmed or mistreated in anyway. There was a safeguarding policy in place which all staff had signed, and training records showed staff had been trained in this area. Staff also explained the whistleblowing procedure and how they would enforce this if they needed to.

Risk assessments were clear and concise and contained information regarding how to manage risks appropriately.

We viewed medication administration records (MAR) sheets for some people we were having their medicines administered by staff, and saw they were accurate and complete. Staff were trained in medication administration, and were subject to regular spot checks conducted by a clinical lead who was qualified to do so. This was to help ensure staff were competent with regards to administering medicines.

Staff were recruited safely and checks were carried out on staff before they started work at the organisation to ensure they were suitable to work with vulnerable people.

Staff completed an induction as well as other training courses selected by the provider to enable them to have the skills needed to complete their role. These ranged from basic training courses required by the provider to more complex care such as tracheostomy care and end of life care. We saw that the more complex care was ‘bought in’ by the provider and delivered by medical professionals qualified to do so.

People told us they liked the staff who supported them, and spoke positively about them.

Staff we spoke with described how they provided diverse and dignified support to people.

Care plans, with regard to people’s preferred routines and personal preferences were well documented and plainly written to enable staff to gain a good understanding of the person they were supporting. Care plans contained a high level of person centred information. By ’person centred’ we mean the service was tailored to meet the needs of the person, and not the service.

Complaints had been responded to by the registered manager and appropriately dealt with including any changes which needed to be implemented because of the complaint. We saw that the registered manager was currently trying to improve the service for people due to the level of complaints regarding late call times and the office staff not always communicating changes.

Quality assurance procedures were on place, and as well as regular audits in medication and care planning, the registered manager had also audited the complaints procedure and the feedback surveys and was in the process of implementing new practices were people had identified causes for concern. Some people told us however, that some of their concerns were raised a number of weeks ago, and there had been little improvement for some, but other people told us they had noticed some improvement with staff call times and communication in the last few weeks. The manager had taken action to identify the concerns that had been raised to them.

There was a process in place to gather feedback from people who used the service and their relatives. This was clearly being used to try and address any areas of concern within the service; however this is an on going process.

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

We found people were treated respectfully and given support to have their say in how they wanted to be helped and were supported to do the things they wanted to do. We also found there were enough staff to provide safe and effective care and support. The organisation had effective systems in place for the management of medicines and monitored the quality of the service provided on a regular basis.