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Anglia Care

Overall: Requires improvement read more about inspection ratings

5 Beta Terrace, West Road, Masterlord Office Village, Ransomes Europark, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP3 9FE (01473) 719185

Provided and run by:
Anglia Living Care Services Ltd

All Inspections

7 June 2023

During an inspection looking at part of the service

About the service

Anglia Care is a domiciliary care service providing personal care to people living in their own homes. The service provides support to adults.

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 our inspection there were 109 people receiving the regulated activity of personal care.

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

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. We considered this guidance as there were people using the service who have a learning disability and or who are autistic.

There had been recent changes in the management of the service. The provider and management team had identified areas for improvement, but these had not yet been fully implemented or embedded in practice. The systems in place for monitoring and assessing the service were not fully established to ensure shortfalls were identified and addressed in a timely way. This included the lack of documented actions taken to show how shortfalls in staff practice, recording and feedback received was addressed.

Records relating to people’s care and support required improvement, there were inconsistencies and some information out of date. To address the shortfalls, a new electronic care planning system was being rolled out and all people’s care needs were being reviewed and documented.

The systems to plan people’s care visits needed improvement to ensure they were managed to support staff with time to travel between visits and stay for the planned amount of time. We received feedback from people and relatives that staff were not always skilled to support them in the way they needed and preferred.

There were systems in place to reduce the risks of abuse and avoidable harm. Support provided with medicines was monitored and actions taken where discrepancies were identified. Staff received training in infection control and processes were in place to monitor staff.

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.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published 29 September 2017).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

We received concerns in relation to the care provided, medicines management and visit times. 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.

The overall rating for the service has changed from good to requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection. We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the safe and well-led sections of this full report.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Anglia Care on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Enforcement

We have identified breaches in relation to deployment of staff and governance at this inspection. Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.

Follow up

We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.

6 September 2017

During a routine inspection

Anglia Care provides a personal care service for people living in their own homes. At the time of this announced inspection of 6 September 2017 there were 92 people who used the service. We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of our inspection to make sure that someone was available.

At our last inspection of 22 January 2015 the service was rated Good. At this inspection we found the service remained Good.

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. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons.’ Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The service continued to provide a safe service to people. This included systems designed to minimise the risks to people, including from abuse. There were systems in place to make sure that there were enough care workers to cover people’s planned care visits. Robust recruitment procedures were in place. Where people required support with their medicines, this was done safely.

Care workers were trained and supported to meet people’s needs. The service understood the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2015 and people were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and care workers cared for them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. Systems were in place to support people to eat and drink enough, where they required support. People were supported to have access to health professionals where needed.

Care workers had good relationships with people who used the service. People’s views and preferences were listened to and acted on about how they wanted to be cared for and supported.

People received care and support which was planned and delivered to meet their individual needs. A complaints procedure was in place and complaints were acted upon and used to improve the service.

The service continued to have an open and empowering culture and quality assurance systems supported the management to identify shortfalls and address them promptly. As a result the quality of the service continued to improve.

Further information is in the detailed findings below.

22 January 2015

During a routine inspection

The inspection took place on the 22 January 2015 and was unannounced.

Anglia Care is a domiciliary care service which provides personal care and support services for a range of people living in their own homes. These included older people, people living with dementia and people with a physical disability.

The service had a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

This is the first inspection of this service under the new provider of Anglia Living Care Services Ltd. The experiences of people were positive. People told us they felt safe, that staff were kind and the care they received was good.

There were good systems and processes in place to keep people safe. Assessments of risk had been undertaken and there were clear instructions for staff on what action to take in order to mitigate them. Staff knew how to recognise the potential signs of abuse and what action to take to keep people safe. The registered manager made sure there was enough staff at all times to meet people’s needs. When the provider employed new staff at the service they followed safe recruitment practices.

Assessments were undertaken to identify people’s support needs and care plans were developed outlining how these needs were to be met. We found that care plans were detailed which enabled staff to provide the individual care people needed. People told us they were involved in the care plans and were consulted about their care to ensure wishes and preferences were met. Staff worked with other healthcare professionals to obtain specialist advice about people’s care and treatment.

The provider had arrangements in place for the safe administration of medicines. People were supported to receive their medicine when they needed it. People were supported to maintain good health and had assistance to access to health care services when needed.

The service considered peoples’ capacity using the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) as guidance. Staff observed the key principles in their day to day work checking with people that they were happy for them to undertake care tasks before they proceeded.

People were supported at mealtimes to access food and drink of their choice where needed. The service had good leadership and direction from the registered manager. Staff felt fully supported by management to undertake their roles. Staff were given training updates, supervision and development opportunities. For example, staff were offered to undertake additional training and development courses to increase their understanding of needs of people using the service.

Feedback was sought by the registered manager via telephones and visits to their homes by the deputy manager to check the quality of service people received. This service was relatively new at the time of our inspection and quality assurance surveys had not been sent out to people, but the service did have plans to put that into place during 2015. People and relatives we spoke with were aware of how to make a complaint and felt they would have no problem raising any issues. The provider responded to complaints in a timely manner with details of any action taken.