Platinum Care

Updated 2 August 2018

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 gave the service 24 hours’ notice of our plan to carry out a comprehensive inspection to ensure that the registered manager would be available to answer our questions during the inspection. The inspection took place on the 13, 20 and 22 June 2018. The inspection team comprised of two adult social care inspectors on day one and one adult social care inspector on the following two days.

Before the inspection we reviewed the information that we held about the service and registered provider. This included looking at any notifications about safeguarding and incidents that the provider has a responsibility as a registered service with the CQC to tell us about. The provider had also 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. At the time of the inspection a recent PIR had not been requested by the CQC.

We liaised with local authority, other local commissioners of service and Healthwatch and considered this information as part of the process for planning for this inspection. Healthwatch is an independent organisation which collects people’s views about health and social care services. Healthwatch did not have any information to share with us about the service. The provider relationship officer from the local authority told us that there had been some concerns raised about how people were supported to have their medicines safely administered and the registered manager was working with the local authority to address these concerns.

We carried out two home visits, spoke with two people on the telephone and emailed one person who received support from the service. In addition, we spoke with two relatives of people using the service and five members of staff, as well as the registered manager and the Chief Executive Officer.

We looked at the policies the service had in place including safeguarding, whistleblowing and business continuity plans. We looked at complaints and concerns records, accidents and incidents, safeguarding, medication audits and records, four staff recruitment files, two staff training and supervision files and three peoples’ care records. On day two we visited two people who use the service and spoke with them and family members about their experience of care. On day three we contacted staff and other people who use the service and their families to find out about their experience.

Updated 2 August 2018

Platinum Care is a domiciliary care agency based in South Bury near Radcliffe town centre. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats in the community. It provides a service to people of adult age, and at the time of this inspection was primarily supporting older adults.

Not everyone using Platinum Care receives a regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided. At the time of our inspection the service was support 39 people with a regulated activity.

This inspection was carried out over three days and included a visit to the office on the 13 June 2018, visiting two people who used the service on the 20 June 2018 and telephone interviews with two people using the service, email contact with a further person who uses the service, and telephone interviews with five members of staff on the 22 June 2018.

The service had a registered manager in place. 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.

At the previous inspection the service had been rated good in the effective, caring, responsive and well led domains and rated as requires improvement in the safe domain. This was because we found a breach of the Health and Social Care Act (HSCA) 2008 (regulated activities) Regulations 2014. This related to how staff were recruited because we found a member of staff had begun working for the service prior to references being received.

Following the last inspection, the registered manager provided us with an action plan confirming the changes the service would make to ensure they complied with this regulation. At this inspection we found systems and policies were in place to support the safe recruitment of staff.

People were safeguarded from harm with procedures in place to report safeguarding concerns and staff receiving training to identify safeguarding concerns and how to respond.

People had individual risk assessments which considered their specific needs and what action to take to reduce the risk to their safety.

The service had a range of business continuity plans to ensure the service could continue to provide safe support for people in the event of an emergency.

The service was continually recruiting and we saw that there were sufficient staff to attend calls and meet people’s needs.

We saw that processes were in place to support people to take their medicines safely including staff training and competency checks.

There were infection control policies in place and staff received training in this area. Staff had access to personal protective equipment (PPE), such as disposable gloves and aprons, to reduce the risk of cross infection when supporting people. People told us that staff always used PPE when supporting them with personal care.

Staff were provided with the training necessary to enable them to do their job effectively and received support and supervision to ensure that they could care and support people safely.

The registered manager and staff all had a good understanding of the Mental Capacity Act and the need for consent. Training was in place regarding the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLs).

Consideration was given to peoples’ nutrition and hydration risks within risk assessment records. Where the service supported people with food and fluids, we found that people were encouraged to eat well and that the food available to them was safe to consume.

We found that care plans considered people’s health care needs and how the service would support these. People told us that staff would support them when there were health concerns. Examples people gave included contacting medical services and providing additional visits when needed.

People we spoke with told us the staff were caring and treated them with dignity and respect.

Peoples’ details and records were stored securely within the office and online and only people who needed the information had access.

People had their needs assessed and were involved in the development of care plans and reviews. We saw that individualised care plans were in place to ensure people were supported appropriately and that their independence was promoted as much as possible.

The service had a complaints procedure in place and we could see that concerns and complaints were managed and appropriately addressed. People we spoke with told us they knew how to raise concerns with the service and felt confident to do so.

The registered manager had systems in place to monitor the quality of the service. This included a range of audits and obtaining feedback from people using surveys and analysing the feedback and data.

The service had worked with staff to develop a positive organisational culture which promoted the quality of care. The registered manager told us about plans to develop coffee mornings for the people using the service and their families to help reduce isolation and develop support networks.

Plans were in place to further develop and improve the delivery of care. This included providing training in-house, which was tailored to the services’ needs and additional training on medicines and dementia. During the inspection we saw that a new online system was being developed to improve communication with staff and ensure care information was readily accessible to staff when it was needed.