Archived: Agincare UK Surrey Court

Updated 1 July 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 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 visited Agincare UK Surrey Court on 15, 19, 20, 26 April and 11 May 2016. This was to visit the range of locations where the service was provided. The inspection was announced 24 hours in advance because we wanted to make sure we could meet people who used the service. The inspection was carried out by one inspector, accompanied on 20 April by an expert by experience. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

Before we visited the service we checked the information that we held about the service and the service provider, including notifications we received from the service. A notification is information about important events which the provider is required to tell us about by law. During March 2016 we sent out 22 survey questionnaires to people who use services and 22 to relatives / friends. We received responses from six people using the service and three relatives / friends.

During the inspection we spoke with 12 people who used the service and six relatives to seek their views about the care and support being provided across the four locations. Not all people living in the extra care schemes receive personal care.

We spoke with seven care staff, two team leaders and the scheme manager, who is referred to in this report as the manager. We also met and spoke with the area manager on the last day of the inspection. We reviewed a range of care and support records for ten people, including records relating to the delivery of their care and medicine administration records. We also reviewed records about how the service was managed, including risk assessments and quality audits, recruitment records for staff, staff rotas and training records.

Updated 1 July 2016

This is the first inspection of the service since it was registered under the current provider in June 2015.

Agincare UK Surrey Court operates as a single domiciliary care agency serving four extra care schemes, providing personal care and support to older people who have their own tenancies through a separate housing provider. Not all people living in the extra care schemes receive personal care.

We visited Agincare UK Surrey Court on 15, 19, 20, 26 April and 11 May 2016.

The service did not have a registered manager in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with 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 did not always receive their medicines safely and the medicine administration system was not operated effectively. Staff training was insufficient to ensure only trained staff administered medicines, resulting in medicine errors.

Staff did not receive robust training and support through supervision to equip them to work with people effectively. Staffing levels were improving with ongoing recruitment. However, people had experience missed or late calls due to staffing shortage or deployment issues. Records of recruitment checks were inconsistent and did not provide assurances that the recruitment system was operated robustly.

People and staff did not always feel listened to by the provider. There was not an effective complaint system in place and actions were not completed from surveys seeking people’s views.

The provider did not operate an effective quality assurance process or develop an on-going improvement plan to continually improve the service. Changes in registered manager and a lack of management support had led to inconsistent management across the service.

Staff were knowledgeable about people’s needs but the care plans were often out of date and did not provide clear detail about how to support people. Work was on-going to review and update care plans. Staff understood and took into account risks to people when delivering personal care but incident records did not always show follow up actions and so changes may not be consistently implemented.

People were supported with their healthcare needs and staff were confident to call the GP and/or ambulance where necessary.

Staff understood their responsibilities in regard to safeguarding and would report any concerns they had. Staff understood and worked within the legal framework to protect people’s rights.

Staff were committed to their role and worked to develop positive, caring relationships with people. People and their relatives valued the experience staff and had confidence in their ability to care for them. People were treated with dignity and respect.

We identified four 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.