The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Radis Community Care (Brunel Court), in Portsmouth, inadequate and placed it in special measures following inspections in April and May.
This was the first inspection for this service and was prompted by concerns received about somebody being neglected and poor management of medicines across the service.
Brunel Court provides personal care and support for people living with dementia, or physical disabilities in their own homes. At the time of the inspection there were 33 people using the service.
As well as being rated inadequate overall, it has also been rated inadequate for being safe, effective and well-led. It was rated requires improvement for being caring and responsive.
Radis Community Care (Brunel Care) has now been placed into special measures. This means CQC is closely monitoring it to ensure people are being kept safe, and it will be inspected again to assess whether improvements have been made. Further action has also been taken, which CQC will report on when legally able to do so.
Roger James, CQC deputy director of operations in the south, said:
"When we inspected Radis Community Care (Brunel Care) we found significant issues in many areas of the service including a lack of leadership. This meant that day to day running of the service wasn’t effective which had an impact on people’s care and experience.
“Staff didn’t always report safeguarding incidents to the local authority, which meant they couldn’t be investigated by their safeguarding team, leaving people at risk of potential harm or abuse.
“We also found that medicines weren’t managed safely. For example, when our inspectors checked the medication administration records, they contained errors and weren’t always up to date. This didn’t assure us that people were being supported safely to take and manage their medicines.
“Staff didn’t have access to information needed to care for people with specific health conditions, such as epilepsy or diabetes. More importantly, if a person became ill who had either condition and, it developed into a medical emergency, staff didn’t have the training or the skills to support the person.
"People deserve a much higher standard of care than what’s being provided by Radis Community Care (Brunel Court). We will continue to keep the service under close review. If we don’t see significant improvement, we won’t hesitate to take further action, even if this results in the closure of the service."
Inspectors also found:
- Care was not always person-centred, and people were not always treated with dignity and respect. Some entries in a communication book used by staff were not respectful when talking about the people being supported
- Lessons learnt from the wider provider’s practices weren’t embedded into this service to share learning
- People did not always feel involved about decisions around their care and their feedback wasn’t always sought or considered by the provider
- The service was not always working to support people in the least restrictive way and in their best interests.