28 November 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Care Signature Christian Homecare Services Limited is a domiciliary care service providing personal care to people in their own homes. At the time of our inspection there were 27 people receiving support from this 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.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Recruitment checks were not sufficiently robust to ensure care staff were suitable to work with vulnerable people. Appropriate safety checks were not consistently in place before care staff started work.
Improvements were needed to ensure people all had a sufficiently detailed care and risk management plan in place. We found some inconsistencies which the registered manager took action to address straight away.
We received mixed feedback from people in relation to receiving regular care staff for their visits. The registered manager was in the process of taking action to address this. Staff had received an induction when they first started working at the service, and training relevant to their roles was either planned or had already been undertaken.
The provider’s systems and processes were not always effective in helping to identify where improvements were required.
Care staff had received training in safeguarding people. Staff we spoke with were confident on how to report concerns. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection and update:
The last rating for this service was good (published 24 April 2018).
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.
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 changed from good to 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 full report. You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Care Signature Christian Homecare Services Limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement and Recommendations
We have identified breaches in relation to the safe recruitment of care staff as well as the provider’s governance 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.