19 June 2023
During a routine inspection
Head Office, Mercylink Care Services Ltd is a domiciliary care agency and is based in the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham. The service provides personal care to adults and children in their own homes. 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.
At the time of the inspection, the service was supporting 7 people with personal care.
People’s experience of using this service
At our previous focused inspection of this service on 3 August 2020, we found concerns with training, risk assessments, pre-employment checks and good governance. We completed a targeted inspection on 22 November 2020 to check on good governance and training and to follow up on warning notices we served in relation to these and found improvements had been made. At this inspection, we found further improvements had been made.
Risks were identified and assessed to ensure people received safe care. Staff were aware of how to safeguard people from abuse. Systems were in place to ensure staff attended calls on time. Systems were in place to prevent and minimise the spread of infections when supporting people. Pre-employment checks had been carried out to ensure staff were suitable to work with vulnerable people. Medicines were being managed safely.
Staff had been trained to undertake their roles effectively. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives. Staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.
People received care from staff who were caring and had a good relationship with them. People’s privacy and dignity was respected. People were encouraged to be independent and to carry out tasks without support.
People received person-centred care. Care plans had been reviewed regularly to ensure they were accurate. Systems were in place to manage complaints and people’s communication needs were met.
Quality assurance systems were in place to identify shortfalls to ensure there was a culture of continuous improvement.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection
The previous rating for this service was Requires Improvement (published 18 September 2020) and there were multiple breaches of regulation. We issued warning notices for a breach of Regulation 17 (Good Governance) and Regulation 18 (Staffing). There were also requirement notices issued for Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) and Regulation 19 (Fit and proper persons) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.
Why we inspected
We undertook this comprehensive inspection to check if there were improvements regarding the concerns we identified at the last focused inspection. The overall rating for the service has changed from Requires Improvement to Good. This is based on the findings at this inspection.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.