The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has put Allied Healthcare Hull into special measures to protect people using the service, after rating them as Inadequate following an inspection in June and July this year.
Allied Healthcare Hull, is registered to provide personal care to people in the community. CQC carried out an unannounced inspection on 30 June, 4 and 27 July this year and asked five questions, are services; safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led. Overall, Allied Healthcare Hull has been rated as Inadequate.
Debbie Westhead, Deputy Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care in the North, said:
“People are entitled to services which provide safe, effective, compassionate and high quality care. We found that the care provided by Allied Healthcare Hull fell a long way short of what we expect services to provide, which is why we have intervened to keep people using this service safe.
“We believe people using this service were exposed to the risk of abuse by way of neglect, as Allied Healthcare Hull did not have sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, and experienced staff to deploy on house calls. There were 430 care calls that the service couldn’t cover between 27 June and 3 July. This is just not good enough.
“It was also very concerning that we found staff consistently didn’t stay with people as long as they should have. These care calls were also not delivered at the time they should have been, in some cases they were two hours earlier than scheduled.
“We were also told by the service they became aware that some of their records had been falsified. This was quite extensive and related to people’s care plans and staff training amongst others. At the time of our inspection, three months after the falsification came to light, Allied Healthcare Hull had still not taken any action to see who needed a care plan review urgently, or if staff were trained for the jobs they were doing.
“We are working with Hull City Council to ensure that people using this service are not at undue risk and we will continue to monitor it very closely. If insufficient improvements have been made such that there remains a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall, we will not hesitate to take further enforcement action.”
The full report from the inspection has been published.
The service did not have sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced to deploy. The service could not cover 430 care calls between 27 June and 3 July 2016. The service also had to permanently relinquish care packages for 17 people back to the local authority commissioners, Hull City Council as they did not have the staff meet their needs. The 17 people required an accumulative total of 567 care hours per week. People who used the service were exposed to the risk of abuse by way of neglect because the registered provider failed to ensure the service could deploy sufficient numbers of staff to meet their assessed needs.
The registered provider failed to ensure plans were in place to deal with emergency situations, including staffing shortages.
Call monitoring records showed that staff consistently failed to stay for the full duration of the care call. Inspectors saw that calls commissioned for 30 minutes were delivered in 11 minutes and those for 60 minutes were delivered in 38 minutes. Care calls were not always delivered at agreed times; records showed care staff arrived over two hours early for some scheduled calls.
During the inspection, the registered manager and care delivery director informed inspectors they became aware, in March 2016, that records had been falsified within the service. This included the dates of when care plans for 160 people had been reviewed, and when audits had taken place for log books [records of the care and support that had been delivered] and medication administration records (MARs). As well as falsified dates of staff training, supervision and spot checks records. At the time of the inspection, three months after they became aware of the falsified records, no action had been taken to assess who needed a care plan review most urgently or what training staff required to ensure they were delivering care and support safely and competently.
Risks were not managed appropriately as the registered provider and registered manager were unaware of the care needs for 160 people. This meant the service was delivering care and support that had not been planned for or risk assessed.
Safe recruitment practices were not followed. Inspectors reviewed 10 staff files and saw that seven staff had been offered a role within the service when only one reference had been obtained. The reference was not always from their last place of employment.
Any regulatory decision that CQC takes is open to challenge by a registered person through a variety of internal and external appeal processes.
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For further information please contact CQC Regional Communications Officer Kerri James by email kerri.james@cqc.org.uk or by phone on 07464 92 9966.
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