Archived: Allied Healthcare - Darlington

Updated 30 July 2015

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

We inspected the service over three days, 10, 15 and 16 December 2014. 48 hours’ notice of the inspection was given because of the nature of the service. We needed to be sure that the registered manager would be available when we visited. The inspection team consisted of a Care Quality Commission inspector, a bank inspector and an expert by experience. The expert by experience had experience of services that provided care and support to people living with physical disabilities.

Before the inspection we reviewed all of the information we held about the service, such as notifications we had received from the service and also information received from the local authority who commissioned the service. Notifications are changes, events or incidents that the provider is legally obliged to send us within the required timescale. We also spoke with the responsible commissioning officer from the local authority commissioning team about the service.

The provider was not asked to complete a provider information return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.

At the time of our inspection visit the service provided the regulated activity of personal care to over 150 people. Our bank inspector and expert by experience spent time speaking with people who used the service over a four day period. They spoke with 38 people who used the service (25%) and four relatives. We also spoke with eight members of staff (11%), including six members of care staff, the registered manager and the regional manager.

During the inspection we reviewed a range of records, including care records, care planning documentation, staff files, including staff recruitment and training records, records relating to the management of the regulated activity provided by the service and a variety of policies and procedures developed and implemented by the provider.

Updated 30 July 2015

We visited Allied Healthcare – Darlington on 10, 15 and 16 December 2014. This inspection was brought forward due to concerns we had received from the local authority. We gave the registered manager 48 hours’ notice of the inspection because of the nature of the service. We needed to be sure that the registered manager would be available when we visited. We last inspected the service in July 2013 and found the service was in breach of one regulation at that time: Regulation 9 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2010.

Allied Healthcare - Darlington is registered to provider personal care for people who live within the community in their own homes. The service provides personal care to older people and people living with a dementia, and younger people with sensory or physical disabilities. The service is provided by Allied Healthcare Group.

The registered manager had been registered with us since 1 May 2013. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

People we spoke with told us that they felt safe using the service.

Staff did not understand the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act (2005) and the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, which meant they were failing to work within the law to support people who may lack capacity to make their own decisions.

We looked at staff employment files and found that staff were subject to rigorous pre-employment checks before they commenced work. When we spoke with staff they informed us of the checks that were carried out and the induction and training process they undertook when they took up employment. Staff told us that they were always completing training and that they felt well supported.

Staff we spoke with spoke with had knowledge about the care needs of people that they helped to support and care for. We found that the staff knowledge of people’s needs was corroborated by care records and our discussions with people who used the service.

We found that people who used the service were provided with information about how they could raise any concerns and complaints as necessary. We found people’s concerns were not responded to appropriately by the registered manager and there were ineffective systems in place to ensure that confidentiality was maintained when complaints were made.

The service had an effective process for monitoring and assessing the quality of the service provision, but we found they needed to be more proactive in their approach to gathering feedback from people who used the service.

The law requires that providers send notifications of changes, events or incidents at the service to the Care Quality Commission. The provider had failed to do this without good reason.

We found two breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.