1 March 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Cera - Staffordshire and Stoke is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to people living in their own homes. The service provides support to people with dementia, learning disabilities or have autistic spectrum disorder, mental health issues, physical disabilities, sensory impairment, older people and younger adults. At the time of our inspection there were 185 people using the service.
Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided.
We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Right Support:
People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives. Staff knew people well and understood how they were to be supported in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests. However, the policies and systems in the service did not always support this practice.
People’s care plans and risk assessments did not always identify how to support them with their individual needs. However, people were supported by staff who knew them well to be able to support them with their needs and to have choice and control in their lives.
Right Care:
Some improvements were needed to people’s care plans and although plans were person centred, these were not always updated in a timely way and not all health risks were assessed and planned for. People and relatives told us they felt safe with their carers. Staff had received mandatory training to be effective in their roles in supporting people.
Right Culture:
People and staff told us they had experienced communication issues with the office staff and issues reported to them were not always acted on. The registered manager had already identified this and was putting measures in place to address it. Some people and relatives told us care calls were sometimes late, and this had caused upset. The registered manager was responsive to our feedback about a potential safeguarding issue and took some immediate action to ensure people were made safe.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection
The last rating for this service was requires improvement (17 March 2021). The service remains rated requires improvement. This service has been rated requires improvement for the last two consecutive inspections.
Why we inspected
We received concerns in relation to safeguarding and call times. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only. For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.
The overall rating for the service has remained requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection. We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the safe and well led sections of this report.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Cera – Staffordshire and Stoke on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement
We have identified breaches in relation to safeguarding, staffing and governance and oversight at this inspection.
Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.
Follow up
We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.