Archived: Mears Care - Rotherham

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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We carried out a follow-up inspection on 4 November 2013 to check the compliance.

At this inspection we found the provider had an effective system to regularly assess and monitor the quality of service that people received.

People who used the service, their representatives and staff were asked for their views about the quality of care by the provider and they were acted on. 'Service user satisfaction surveys' were sent out to people each year. The last feedback was mostly positive. One person commented, 'I am very happy with my regular care workers. I hope it stays that way.' A relative said their care worker was very helpful to their relative and themselves 'in very difficult circumstances.' Where improvement was required there was an action plan with time scales which was monitored by the manager.

The manager said, they carried out audits of incidents and complaints each month to identify any themes. They said depending on their findings they decided whether there was a need for staff training, supervision or changes to their work environment to avoid such incidents.

Everyone told us that appropriate consent was obtained for care or support delivered by staff. They said staff often asked whether people were comfortable with the support provided. One person said, 'I thought the whole approach was professional, as they asked for our views and wrote it all down.'

People's needs were assessed; care and treatment were planned and delivered in line with their individual care plan. During our visits to people's homes we noted care workers spent the allocated time with people. Care workers were familiar with the people; they were respectful and had a good rapport with them.

We contacted the funding authority, community health professionals such as district nurses and care managers who were social workers to find out their views of the service provided by the agency. The comments from them were positive. People we spoke with said they were confident the care workers worked in partnership with the GP, district nurses and social workers.

There was a lack of evidence that the provider had taken account of complaints and comments by people to improve the service. We noted that the branch did not have a failsafe system to monitor calls. There was no evidence that the provider had taken action on the findings of their last annual service user survey. Following our inspection the provider had informed us that they were to improve the present system for monitoring quality.