The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has put LH Social Care Limited – Barnsley, South Yorkshire into special measures to protect people using this service, after rating the service as Inadequate after an inspection earlier this year.
LH Social Care Limited - Barnsley provides personal care to adults and children living in their own homes throughout Barnsley and the surrounding areas.
We inspected this service on 26 February and 3 March 2016.
Under CQC’s new programme of inspections, all adult social care services are given a rating to help people choose care. We ask five questions, are services; safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led. Overall, LH Social Care Limited – Barnsley has been rated as Inadequate.
The full report from the inspection is published.
The service has a history of breaches of regulation. The agency was last inspected on 22 and 29 June 2015 and was not meeting the requirements of four regulations of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. We imposed an additional condition on their registration as a service provider in respect of the regulated activity, personal care. The condition states: The registered provider must not provide the regulated activity 'personal care' to any further service users not already being provided with personal care without prior written agreement from the Commission until the location has a follow up inspection and we are satisfied the location is not in breach of regulations.
When we inspected LH Social Care Limited - Barnsley we found the registered provider had made improvements in all areas, but these were insufficient to fully meet regulations.
Our most recent report identified a number of areas which we found concerning including:
- Better systems were needed to ensure sufficient numbers of staff were deployed to meet people's needs.
- Staff sought people's consent to care and treatment, but their understanding of the Mental Capacity Act and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards needed to improve so that people's rights were respected.
- We found improvements with the training and supervision of staff to maintain and update their skills and knowledge. However, gaps remained with some staff's training and the actions from supervisions had not always been addressed in a timely way. In addition, we found staff had not received an annual appraisal.
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.
“Our biggest concern with LH Social Care Limited – Barnsley is that there was a lack of sufficient improvement to meet their regulation obligations. This is why we have intervened to keep people using this service safe.
“Our first instinct is to make sure the service improves, but we must take action to protect people when we are worried about their safety.
“The service will be kept under review and, we will not hesitate to take enforcement action should the service deteriorate further.”
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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.
Journalists wishing to speak to the press office outside of office hours can find out how to contact the team here. Please note: the press office is unable to advise members of the public on health or social care matters. For general enquiries, please call 03000 61 61 61.
Find out more
Read our reports about LH Social Care Limited – Barnsley.