15 April 2016
During a routine inspection
Agincare UK Surrey Court operates as a single domiciliary care agency serving four extra care schemes, providing personal care and support to older people who have their own tenancies through a separate housing provider. Not all people living in the extra care schemes receive personal care.
We visited Agincare UK Surrey Court on 15, 19, 20, 26 April and 11 May 2016.
The service did not have a registered manager in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with 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.
People did not always receive their medicines safely and the medicine administration system was not operated effectively. Staff training was insufficient to ensure only trained staff administered medicines, resulting in medicine errors.
Staff did not receive robust training and support through supervision to equip them to work with people effectively. Staffing levels were improving with ongoing recruitment. However, people had experience missed or late calls due to staffing shortage or deployment issues. Records of recruitment checks were inconsistent and did not provide assurances that the recruitment system was operated robustly.
People and staff did not always feel listened to by the provider. There was not an effective complaint system in place and actions were not completed from surveys seeking people’s views.
The provider did not operate an effective quality assurance process or develop an on-going improvement plan to continually improve the service. Changes in registered manager and a lack of management support had led to inconsistent management across the service.
Staff were knowledgeable about people’s needs but the care plans were often out of date and did not provide clear detail about how to support people. Work was on-going to review and update care plans. Staff understood and took into account risks to people when delivering personal care but incident records did not always show follow up actions and so changes may not be consistently implemented.
People were supported with their healthcare needs and staff were confident to call the GP and/or ambulance where necessary.
Staff understood their responsibilities in regard to safeguarding and would report any concerns they had. Staff understood and worked within the legal framework to protect people’s rights.
Staff were committed to their role and worked to develop positive, caring relationships with people. People and their relatives valued the experience staff and had confidence in their ability to care for them. People were treated with dignity and respect.
We identified four breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.