27 June 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
About the service
Sterling Standard Care Group is a domiciliary care service that provides care and support to people living with dementia, older people, people with a learning disability and autistic people, including children. At the time of our visit, the service was providing care and support to 80 people living predominantly in North London.
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 visit, around 30 people received personal care.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Right Support:
Risks in relation to people's care and welfare were not always thoroughly assessed. This meant staff did not always have the right guidance to support people safely. Systems were in place to manage people’s medicines. However, improvement was needed in the way information about people’s medicines was presented in their care plans and risk assessments.
Staff supported people to make decisions following best practice in decision-making.
Staff enabled people to access specialist health and social care support in the community.
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.
Right Care:
Staff were deployed effectively to meet people’s needs safely. However, we found shortfalls in recruitment processes, more specifically around staff documentation.
Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. People told us staff were kind and caring.
Staff promoted equality and diversity in their support for people.
Right Culture:
The service’s quality improvement processes needed to improve as they failed to identify the issues we found at this inspection.
People received support from a competent staff team. Managers ensured staff had appropriate support and training.
Managers worked towards improving care delivery by involving and gathering the views of people and their loved ones. Staff valued and acted upon people’s views.
There was a positive culture where people felt empowered and were pleased with their care.
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 13 March 2019).
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.
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. You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Sterling Standard Care Group on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement and Recommendations
We have identified breaches in relation to safe care and treatment, and good governance.
We made a recommendation about the safe recruitment of staff.
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.