CQC acts to protect the safety and welfare of people receiving care from a home care agency in Halifax

22 January 2014

CQC acts to protect the safety and welfare of people receiving care from a home care agency in Halifax.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is taking action to protect the safety and welfare of people receiving care from a homecare agency in Halifax.

In a report which is published today, CQC inspectors identified a number of concerns about standards of care provided by PAJ Premier Care Limited trading as Carewatch (Calderdale).

This report details the findings from an inspection of the agency based at Elsie Whiteley Innovation Centre, Hopwood Lane in Halifax which took place in November 2013 and was carried out to check if improvements required by a previous inspection had been made.

We found that the agency was still failing to meet all four standards reviewed and urgent improvements were required:

• People were not consistently receiving the care they required at appropriate times of the day because visits were often delayed or missed entirely.
• Records showed that staff visits did not always last for the agreed length of time increasing the risk that people’s individual needs might not be met.
• Where care workers had reported safeguarding issues to senior staff these were not always referred on to the relevant authorities in line with procedure.
• Although a system was in place to monitor and respond to complaints, inspectors found that records relating to how complaints had been dealt with contained inconsistencies and the extent to which actions for improvement were being identified or implemented was not apparent.
• On several occasions the agency had failed notify CQC of significant events affecting people using the service as is required under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

As a result of the inspection, CQC has issued three formal warnings to the provider, requiring improvements in relation to standards of care and welfare of people who use services; safeguarding of people who use services from abuse and complaints handling. We will return unannounced to check that the required improvements have been met.

Malcolm Bower-Brown, CQC’s Regional Director for the North said:

“The continued failure to meet national standards at Caremark (Calderdale) is unacceptable. We have told the provider very clearly where improvements must be made.

“We will inspect again in the near future and if we find the agency has not made the necessary improvement we will consider the need for further regulatory action on our part.

“In the meantime, we continue to monitor the agency very closely, liaising with local commissioners to ensure that people using the service receive the standards of care they are entitled to expect.”

Any regulatory decision that CQC takes is open to challenge by a registered person through a variety of internal and external appeal processes.

Ends

For further information please contact the CQC Regional Communications Team, David Fryer 07901 514 220 or Kirstin Hannaford 0191 233 3629.

The CQC press office can be contacted on 0207 448 9401 or out of hours on 07917 232 143.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Further details of the inspectors’ findings are published on our website here.