Archived: Unique Home Care Limited

Updated 1 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 was 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.

The inspection took place on 16, 18, 19 and 20 March 2015 and was carried out in response to concerns raised by a health care professional. The inspection was announced. This meant the staff and acting manager knew we would be visiting. The inspection was carried out by two Adult Social Care Inspectors. During our inspection we were told there were a total of 98 people using the service.

Before this inspection we reviewed notifications that we had received from the service to help us plan our inspection.

We visited three service users in their own homes and met with their care staff. We also spoke with two staff including the acting manager (who had been appointed by the provider, who was also the registered manager, to manage the service on a day to day basis). We did this to gain their views of the service provided.

We looked at four care records and five staff training and recruitment files.

For this inspection, the provider was not asked to complete a Provider Information Return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. During the inspection we talked with people about what was good about the service and asked the acting manager what improvements they were making.

Updated 1 July 2015

We inspected this service on 16, 18, 19 and 20 March 2015 which was carried out in response to concerns raised by a health care professional. The inspection was announced. This meant the staff and acting manager knew we would be visiting. Our inspection focussed on a small number of people who a health professional had raised concerns about.

Unique Home Care Limited provides personal care to people who wish to remain independent in their own homes. The agency covers the areas of County Durham and Darlington and provides a range of home care and support services.

The agency had a registered manager in place. 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 registered manager was also the provider of Unique Home Care Limited. She had appointed an acting manager to undertake the day to day management of the agency. The acting manager had been in post since July 2014.

The people we visited had not had their physical and mental health needs monitored by the provider. There were no regular reviews of their health and care needs and the provider could not demonstrate how it responded to people’s changing needs. Arrangements were not in place to ensure people received medication in a safe way.

We looked at people’s care plans, where people had very complex needs. We found there was very little information to guide staff about how to meet these needs safely.

The staff we spoke with said that although they had induction training when they first started working for the provider, they had not had any further training since this time. These people had been recruited by the agency between 2011 and 2013. They also told us they had had very little contact with the agency since their employment, other than to hand in their time sheets, and had not received regular supervision or annual appraisals.

We viewed records which showed us that there were unsafe staff recruitment procedures in place.

The staff we met with were caring in their interactions with service users.

We saw the views of the people using the service were not regularly sought.