- Homecare service
Sure Care Chester
Report from 13 January 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of Assessment: 13 January to 3 February 2025. The service is a care at home service providing support to adults of all ages. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided. At the time of our assessment, 30 people were being supported with personal care.
We carried out a site visit to the office on 13 January 2025, with the remainder of the assessment being conduct offsite. The assessment was prompted in part due to concerns received about staff training and safeguarding. A decision was made for us to carry out an assessment and examine those risks. We assessed a total of 22 quality statements from the safe, effective, and well-led key questions.
We found 3 breaches in regulation in relation to safeguarding, staffing and governance. The provider did not always ensure people’s care needs were met in a safe way. Governance systems were not always effective enough to monitor and improve the quality of the service. The overall rating is requires improvement.
At the time of the assessment, a registered manager was not in place, although the current manager had submitted their application to CQC to become registered. There was no effective oversight in place to monitor risk, such as missed, late and cancelled calls.
Although we were assured staff were aware of risks to people and how to mitigate them, the level of risk to people had not always been assessed accurately. Some risk assessments did not contain adequate guidance for staff on how to manage them. People were not adequately protected from the risk of harm and abuse; we saw repeated issues such as cancelled and missed calls.
In instances where CQC have decided to take enforcement action against a provider, we will publish this information on our website after any representations and/or appeals have concluded.
People's experience of this service
People and their relatives feedback about the service was largely negative. People told us they felt the service they received had deteriorated over the last few months. People were aware the service had undergone changes in management and felt it was no longer ran well.
People told us they had experienced missed calls, and this had caused them anxiety. When people had called the office to report their concerns, they felt they were not always listened to, and their concerns were not always acted on. For example, one person felt their preferences in relation to gender of staff were ignored.
People did not always experience continuity of care. Some people told us new members of staff were not always introduced to them beforehand. Whilst people were keen to tell us they thought staff were kind and caring and treated them well, one person told us, “Staff are kind and treat me with dignity,” some people felt staff were overworked and were often rushing to get to their next call due to time restraints. One person told us, “I have 1 hour call twice per day, staff consistently cut the call short, sometimes they are here for 35-40 mins. It’s because staff are overworked and looking to rush off to the next call.”
We were not assured people were protected from the risk of harm. People fed back that some of their calls had been missed, leaving them without the care and support they needed.