8 March 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Alpha Health and Care Services Limited provides personal care and support to people who require assistance in their own home. At the time of our inspection approximately 59 people were being supported by the service. 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
Feedback on the service was varied. We received mostly negative feedback on the timings of care calls and people were unsure how long carers should stay and did not know in advance which carers would be visiting them. One person said, “I have a good rapport with the carers, but they never come for more than two days and it could be a different carer every visit which means they never get to know me.”
Care and treatment was not recorded in detail or person-centred way to provide safe support to people. Care plans and risk assessments did not contain enough guidance to staff to mitigate risks to people. Medicine practices needed to improve to insure people were supported safely. Recruitment processes needed to be more robust to ensure the safe recruitment of staff.
The registered manager had not implemented effective systems to provide oversight of the service to monitor and improve care. Care needed to be planned in a more person-centred way to ensure people had the support they wanted.
The registered manager had an action plan in place they were working towards to improve outcomes for people and provide an effective oversight of the service.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection was requires improvement (published 15 May 2021.) The overall rating for the service has remained requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection. This service has been rated requires improvement for the last 3 consecutive inspections.
Why we inspected
We received concerns in relation to the safe care of people. 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.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Alpha Health and Care Services Limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement
We have identified breaches in relation to safe care and treatment, including medicines management and good governance at this inspection.
Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.
Full information about CQC’s regulatory response to the more serious concerns found during inspections is added to reports after any representations and appeals have been concluded.
Follow up
We will meet with the provider following this report being published to discuss how they will make changes to ensure they improve their rating to at least good. We will work with the local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.