Archived: Allied Healthcare Croydon

Updated 22 December 2014

The inspection team consisted of an inspector and an expert by experience who had experience of older people’s care services. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of service.

We visited the service on 15 July 2014. This was an announced inspection. We told the provider 48 hours before our inspection that we would be coming. During this inspection we spoke with seven people using the service and three relatives. We spoke with four staff members, the continuous quality improvement manager and the registered manager. We examined five care plans, as well as a range of other records about people’s care, staff and how the service was managed.

Before our inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service. This included any accidents, incidents and complaints the provider had notified us about in the last 12 months, and the Provider Information Return (PIR) the manager had sent us. The PIR is a form we ask the provider to complete prior to our visit which gives us some key information about the service, including what the service does well, what they could do better and improvements they plan to make. We sent 50 questionnaires to people asking them to tell us about the care and support they received from the service, 10 people responded and they told us about the care provided to them.

This report was written during the testing phase of our new approach to regulating adult social care services. After this testing phase, inspection of consent to care and treatment, restraint, and practice under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) was moved from the key question ‘Is the service safe?’ to ‘Is the service effective?’

The ratings for this location were awarded in October 2014. They can be directly compared with any other service we have rated since then, including in relation to consent, restraint, and the MCA under the ‘Effective’ section. Our written findings in relation to these topics, however, can be read in the ‘Is the service safe’ sections of this report.

Updated 22 December 2014

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 and to pilot a new inspection process being introduced by CQC which looks at the overall quality of the service.

Allied Healthcare is a domiciliary care agency providing care and support to adults and some children who live in the London Borough of Croydon and surrounding areas. At the time of our inspection 128 people were using the service.

At the last inspection we carried out in September 2013 the service was found to be meeting the regulations we looked at. There was a registered manager in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service and has the legal responsibility for meeting the requirements of the law; as does the provider. People using the service told us they felt safe and that staff treated them well. Safeguarding adults from abuse procedures were robust and staff understood how to safeguard the people they supported.

Staff were up to date with training. Field care supervisors carried out regular unannounced visits to check how staff were working. There was an out of hours on call system in operation, this made sure support and advice was available for staff working outside office hours.

The manager told us they tried to match care workers with the people who use the service and keep the same staff with the same person. People we spoke with felt they were well matched with their care workers.

We saw people were involved in making decisions about their care, treatment and support and the care plans we checked reflected this. We saw how people’s individual risk was assessed and how care plans and risk assessments were regularly reviewed.

People told us their privacy and dignity was respected by staff. Staff we spoke with explained how they would always ask for consent before assisting people and explained the methods they used to help maintain people’s privacy and dignity.

People said they would complain if they needed to but some were unsure who to make a complaint to. People were happy with the standard of care they received but some told us the office staff did not always return their calls or tell them when they would have a different care worker.

The service carried out annual satisfaction surveys. We saw action plans in place for issues identified that needed improvement. The manager told us they had already met most of the goals identified in the action plan and were working towards meeting the rest.