Archived: Mears Care - Rotherham

Updated 17 May 2016

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 was 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.

The inspection included a visit to the agency’s office which took place on 13 April 2016. The provider was given short notice of the visit in line with our current methodology for inspecting domiciliary care agencies. The inspection was carried out by an adult social care inspector.

We sent questionnaires to a sample of people using the service, their relatives and staff. We also spoke with staff during the inspection, and contacted a further sample of people using the service by telephone after the site visit.

To help us to plan and identify areas to focus on in the inspection we considered all the information we held about the service, including notifications submitted to us by the provider, and information gained from people using the service and their relatives who had contact CQC to share feedback about the service. Before the inspection, the provider completed 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.

During the inspection site visit we looked at documentation including care records, risk assessments, personnel and training files, complaints records and other records relating to the management of the service.

Updated 17 May 2016

The inspection took place on 13 April 2016, with the provider being given short notice of the visit to the office in line with our current methodology for inspecting domiciliary care agencies. The service was previously inspected in November 2013, when no breaches of legal requirements were identified.

Mears Care - Rotherham provides personal care to people living in their own homes across a sizeable geographical area, incorporating Rotherham, Barnsley, Doncaster and Wakefield. Services in some of these areas had only recently begun to be provided by this location following the provider carrying out a restructure of its services and transferring additional provision to the Rotherham office. The office is based on the outskirts of Rotherham. The agency predominantly provides personal care services to people whose main needs are those associated with older people, but also provides support to people with other needs, including learning or physical disability.

The service had a registered manager in post at the time of our inspection. 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 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

At the time of our inspection there were over 400 people using the service. We contacted staff, people using the service and their relatives by using questionnaires to gain their views and experiences. We also spoke with staff during the inspection and contacted people using the service by phone following the inspection, again to ascertain their views about the service provided.

People’s care files showed that their care needs had been thoroughly assessed, and they received a good quality of care from staff who understood the level of support they needed. Every respondent to our surveys told us that they felt the service they received was caring, and that their care workers treated them with dignity and respect.

Staff had completed a very comprehensive induction which lasted a week, and a training programme was available that helped them meet the needs of the people they supported. There was a training officer based in the office who was able to tailor training to people’s individual needs.

There were arrangements to inform people how to make a complaint and how it would be managed. Prior to the inspection, a number of people using the service, and their relatives, told us that they had not found the complaints system to be effective, however, when we checked the complaints system during the inspection we found it to be thorough and that complainants received detailed, timely responses.

There were systems in place to reduce the risk of abuse and to assess and monitor potential risks to individual people, however, we observed that risk assessments were not always reviewed at the provider’s intended frequency There were clear audit systems conducted by managers, but they had not always identified where some care documents needed to be reviewed or needed to be completed in more detail.

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