Archived: Allied Healthcare Alice Bye Court

Updated 14 July 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 undertook an announced focused inspection of Allied Healthcare Alice Bye Court on 13 and 14 June 2018. This inspection was done because the local authority had informed us of concerns they had about the service. These related to medicine administration, care staff responding poorly to emergencies and poor management of the service. One inspector inspected the service against two of the five questions we ask about services, is the service safe and is the service well-led.

No risks, concerns or significant improvement were identified in the remaining Key Questions through our ongoing monitoring or during our inspection activity so we did not inspect them. The ratings from the previous comprehensive inspection for these Key Questions were included in calculating the overall rating in this inspection.

The service was given one working days’ notice because the location provides a domiciliary care service. We needed to be sure that the appropriate staff would be available in the office to assist with the inspection. The inspection was completed by one inspector.

We looked at all the information we have collected about the service. This included the previous report, information received from other bodies and notifications sent to us. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to tell us about by law.

We looked at paperwork for six people who receive a service. This included support plans, daily notes and other documentation, such as medication records. In addition we looked at records related to the running of the service. These included a sample of health and safety, quality assurance, staff recruitment and training records.

We spoke with ten people and four staff on the days of the inspection. On the days of the inspection we spent time with the manager (who is beginning the process to register with the Care Quality Commission) and the organisation’s care delivery director. Information received from the local authority commissioning and safeguarding teams had instigated our focused inspection.

Updated 14 July 2018

This was an announced inspection which took place on 13 and 14 June 2018.

Allied Healthcare Alice Bye Court is a domiciliary care agency. This service provides care and support to people living in specialist ‘extra care’ housing. Extra care housing is purpose-built or adapted single household accommodation in a shared site or building. Currently, the service provides care and support to 38 people. The accommodation is bought or rented, and is the occupant’s own home. People’s care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for extra care housing, this inspection looked at people’s personal care and support.

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of this service on 13 February 2017. The service was rated as good in all domains and overall good at that inspection. After that inspection we received concerns in relation to people’s safety and poor management of the service. As a result we undertook a focused inspection to look into those concerns. At this inspection we rated the domains of safe and well-led as requiring improvement.

This report only covers our findings in relation to those topics. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Allied Healthcare Alice Bye Court on our website at www.cqc.org.uk”

There was not a registered manager running the service. 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.

The management team currently running the service were described as supportive and effective. Relevant parties told us that things were improving. However, although the service had an effective system of assessing, reviewing and improving the quality of care provided this had not been followed effectively. Some areas had been identified as requiring improvement but action had not been taken to do so. This breached the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

People were not supported with their medicines as safely as they could be. Medicines were not always recorded accurately. The support people needed with medicines was not clear because care plans did not give staff enough detailed information to ensure they gave the correct medicines at the right times. This breached the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

In most areas people, staff and visitors were protected from harm and were kept as safe as possible. Staff knew how to protect the people in their care and understood what action they need to take if they identified any concerns. General risks and risks to individuals were identified and action was taken to reduce them, as far as possible. People’s needs were, currently, met by sufficient numbers of staff.

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