Archived: Housing & Care 21 - Thomas Place

We visited the service again in February 2014 to check that this situation had been addressed, and that people had been protected from receiving inappropriate or unsafe care.

We spoke with people about their experience of using the service. They told us that the care staff were 'Very good' and that they were happy with their care. However, they also said that care staff did not always visit at the expected times and that agency staff did not understand their needs.

We saw that care visits were frequently shorter than the allocated time recorded in people's care plans and that late calls had an impact on people's welfare.

We found that risk assessments had been completed for people but that the guidance within them had not been followed by staff or managers; which made them unfit for the purpose of keeping people safe.

At our inspection in November 2013 we found that people had not been protected from the risks associated with the management of medicines.

During this visit we saw that attempts had been made by the new manager to improve the documentation about people's medicines. We found that new medication files had been introduced which kept all of the information in one place. However, when we visited people in their homes, we saw that the management of medicines continued to place people at risk.

We spoke with people about their experiences of using the service. One person told us 'The staff are Ok' and others said that they were happy at the service but that staff were rushed.

All staff had received adult protection training and knew how to recognise and report any suspicions of abuse. The service had both a safeguarding and whistle blowing policy in place.

Medicines were not being administered safely and we found that staff had not always observed people taking their medicines before signing off the medication administration sheets,(MARS).

The service had a recruitment policy and we found that all the required checks had been made before staff commenced work.

People's comments and complaints had been sought by the provider and had been considered in order to improve the quality of the service.