MiHomecare - Tower Hamlets

Mihomecare – Tower Hamlets is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to older people and people with physical disabilities in their homes under contract to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. At the time of our inspection there were 241 people receiving personal care from the service.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

People told us they were treated with dignity and respect by their care workers. One person said, “They are very kind and cheer up my day.” People spoke of their care workers taking appropriate infection control measures, arriving on time and doing what was expected of them.

People reported their care workers listened to them and understood their needs and no-one felt rushed when receiving care. Some people spoke of not being able to get a care worker who spoke the language they spoke, but the provider was taking action to address this.

The majority of people we spoke with told us they had not experienced problems contacting the office, although this was not always the case, and in most cases issues were resolved promptly by managers.

There were suitable systems for providing safe care. There were enough staff recruited safely and deployed in a way which meant people’s needs were safely met. The provider identified risks to people’s wellbeing and took appropriate steps to reduce these risks.

Medicines were safely managed with systems of audit which detected any errors or recording mistakes. Staff understood their responsibilities to provide safe care and to report any issues of concern to managers.

Staff received the right training, supervision and support to carry out their roles. The service carried out spot checks of the care people received. The service assessed and met people’s needs relating to staying healthy and eating and drinking well.

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.

The service sought consent to care and made sure they were acting in people’s best interests when people could not make decisions for themselves. People’s care was planned to meet their needs, with detailed care plans which made staff told us helped them understand people’s choices and cultural needs.

The service was implementing a new standardised system for managing records and communication in the branch and this had already resulted in an improvement in the standard of documentation and oversight. Managers had a good understanding of how to engage with staff and people who used the service. The provider was open and honest when things had gone wrong and had identified areas where the service needed to improve.

For more information, please read the detailed findings section of this report. If you are reading this as a separate summary, the full report can be found on the Care Quality Commission (CQC) website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection:

We registered this service on 19 January 2021 and this was the first inspection.

Why we inspected

We were prompted to carry out this inspection as our review of information we held about the service indicated there may be a higher level of risk associated with this service. We carried out this comprehensive inspection to examine these risks and to give the service a first rating.

Follow up

We will continue to review information we receive about the service in line with our monitoring activity which will inform when we next inspect the service.