Cheshire home care agency ordered to make improvements or face further action

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has told Mrs Kimberley Ellen Dupree that she must make urgent improvements to Cestrian Care, in order to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the people it provides home care support to in the Chester area.

During unannounced inspections in July this year, inspectors found that the service was failing to provide care which was safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs or well led.

Under CQC’s programme of inspections, all adult social care services are being given a rating to help people choose care. Overall, Cestrian Care has been rated as Inadequate.

A full report from the inspection has been published on the CQC website: www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-2085893771.

The report highlights a number of areas of concern, including:

• There was a lack understanding of safeguarding and policies that could be used to guide staff to protect people from risks of abuse. Inspectors found evidence of incidents having occurred which had not been reported to the local authority or CQC.
• Checks carried out on staff as part of the service’s recruitment procedures had not always been fully completed before staff started providing care.
• Care records did not contain enough detail to reflect a person’s current care needs, as a result people were not protected against the risks associated with unsafe use and management of medicines and also at risk of being deprived of their liberty.
• Staff were not provided with effective training and were not supported to develop further through regular supervision and appraisals.
• The provider did not follow their own procedure when responding to complaints and some were not resolved satisfactorily, inspectors saw no evidence of learning that had resulted in changes to the service.
• Inspectors could not be assured that the provider was accurately recording the time carers spent supporting people and that efforts had been made to adjust staffing when people’s care needs changed.
• The service had been operating with incorrect registration information because the provider had failed to inform CQC that the service had changed address and a new manager had been recruited.
• The provider did not have an effective system in place to regularly assess and monitor the quality of service that people received.

Debbie Westhead, CQC’s Deputy Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care in the North, said:

“Whilst we received some good comments about care received from people the service supported, the inspection of Cestrian Care raised serious concerns and observed practices that were unsafe.

“To not have effective policies and systems in place helping staff to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the people they support and to not inform CQC of a change of address, and new recruitment of a manager, are very serious concerns.

“Since the inspection we have been working closely with the local authority to ensure that people being provided support are not at risk. We have placed this service in special measures and made it clear where action must be taken to address the concerns identified.

“We will re-inspect the service within six months to check whether sufficient improvements have been made. If we find that the service being provided remains inadequate, we will consider taking further steps to cancel its registration with CQC."

Ends

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