Archived: Bangladeshi Parents & Carers Association

Bangladeshi Parents & Carers Association is a domiciliary care agency which provides support to people living in their own homes. The service also provides day services and activities to people in several day centres in East London. At the time of our inspection the service was providing personal care to two people, one of whom was out of the country.

People’s experience of using this service:

People’s relatives told us that care workers treated their family members in a dignified way and did all that was required.

Managers contacted people and their families to ensure that they were happy with the service they received.

Care workers told us they felt well supported by managers and received enough training to carry out their roles. Care workers did not receive sufficient supervision or appraisals and there was no evidence of spot checks taking place.

Staff understood people’s needs and how best to support them but this was not well documented. The service did not effectively assess people’s support needs and the service did not have support plans in place.

The provider had assessed risks to people using the service, but did not have mitigation plans in place for some risks to people’s wellbeing.

Managers lacked a clear understanding of regulatory requirements and did not have suitable systems for auditing and improving the quality of the service.

People were not supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff did not support them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service did not support this practice. The service did not document people’s consent for their care or assess people’s capacity to make decisions for themselves.

Rating at last inspection:

We last inspected this service in October 2018. Due to the small number of people using the service we did not have enough evidence to provide a rating for this service.

Why we inspected:

This was a routine first ratings inspection.

Enforcement:

We have identified breaches of regulations concerning consent, staffing, person centred care and good governance. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of this report.

Follow up:

We will continue to monitor this service and will return within six months to check that improvements have been made.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

‘Bangladeshi Parents & Carers Association’ is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes in the community and provides a service to older people and people with learning disabilities. The organisation provides two day services but this is not regulated by CQC. At the time of our inspection one person had been using the service for five months. We were able to carry out an inspection but we could not rate the quality of the service as we had insufficient evidence on which to do so.

The service had a registered manager. 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 provider had systems in place for assessing risks to people using the service, but these did not always result in a clear management plan.

The service operated safer recruitment processes to ensure staff were suitable for their roles. People told us that their care worker usually arrived on time and they were contacted if they were running late for any reason.

Care workers did not provide support to people with their medicines in their homes, but due to their work in the day service had training and experience in this area. There were systems in place to monitor medicines but records of support were not designed in a way which could be easily audited or provide the right information for care workers.

People using the service knew what care they needed to receive and told us that they received this as planned. The person using the service was consistently supported by the same care worker who understood their needs well. The provider had not developed their own care plans for people and relied on the local authorities plans, which were task-centred and lacked personal details.

There was a policy for providing information in a way which met people’s needs, but only some documents were available in community languages. Care workers spoke the same language as people and their families and understood their cultural needs.

Care workers received the right training in order to meet people’s needs safely and received supervision from managers. There were suitable processes in place to safeguard people from abuse and improper treatment. People knew how to complain about the service and there was a process that allowed an external body to oversee a complaint when necessary. There were processes in place to record when things had gone wrong but these did not include a clear way of recording learning from accidents and incidents and actions to prevent a recurrence.

Managers had systems in place to monitor the quality of the service but these were not fully implemented with regards to the domiciliary service. Due to the small size of the service we were unable to judge their effectiveness.

We were unable to provide a rating for this service. We will continue to monitor the development of the service and will carry out a further inspection in six months’ time.