The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has taken action at Forever Homecare in Burnham Slough and rated it Inadequate overall, following a recent inspection. It has also been rated Inadequate in relation to whether it is safe and well-led.
It was previously rated Good overall when it was last inspected in August 2017.
Forever Homecare is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people in their own home, either by providing live-in staff to offer 24-hour support, or with daily visits to people. At the time of inspection, the service was supporting 47 people across Buckinghamshire and Berkshire.
CQC carried out a focused inspection of the service in January after receiving information of concern in relation to the overall management and the safe management of medicines.
When inspectors spoke to people using the service or their family members, the majority provided negative feedback regarding their care. Many said they were not given a copy of the weekly care rota, so they were unsure which carer was coming and when. Some people complained that staff arrived late, or not at all, and sometimes they left early. People also described examples of receiving poor care, such as items being left out of reach, or carers not treating them with dignity when changing them.
CQC’s Head of Inspection for Adult Social Care, Rebecca Bauers, said:
“Our inspectors found that Forever Homecare was not providing people with safe care and treatment. They were not safeguarded from abuse or risks, including infection control risks in relation to COVID-19. Safe medicine practices were not followed, and accidents and incidents were not effectively managed. There was also no evidence of learning following an incident, to prevent reoccurrence.
“We have issued the provider with a warning notice and placed the service in special measures, which means we will keep it under review and re-inspect within six months to check for improvements. We have requested an action plan from the provider outlining what they will do to improve standards of quality and safety.
“We are currently considering what further action we may want to take if the provider has not made sufficient improvements when we return.”
During the inspection, CQC found:
- The service was not well managed or monitored. It did not have a registered manager in place and the provider had failed to supervise the service manager who was responsible for key aspects of the service, including safeguarding adults.
- The service had failed to inform CQC of incidents that had taken place and did not understand its responsibility to do so under duty of candour regulation.
- Staff recruitment policies were not followed, and staff were not always supervised and trained in line with the provider’s policy.
- Records did not show that people were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives in the least restrictive way possible.
- Communication was an issue for some people. In some cases, staff did not speak English when visiting a person in their care. Others said they did not get responses to questions raised and or they had to chase for information.
- The service’s infection control policy had not been updated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, so advice on wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) was not in line with latest national best practice guidance.
- The service did not test staff regularly for COVID-19. Inspectors received inconsistent feedback regarding how test kits had been obtained. The legitimacy of the tests was uncertain, as it was not clear whether they had been purchased privately or ordered from the government national testing programme.
Full details of the inspection are given in the report published online here.
Ends
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