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City Care Agency

Overall: Good read more about inspection ratings

102 Mile End Road, London, E1 4UN (020) 3441 2577

Provided and run by:
City Care Agency Ltd

Latest inspection summary

On this page

Background to this inspection

Updated 13 May 2023

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

This inspection was carried out by 2 inspectors and 2 Experts by Experience. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of service.

Service and service type

City Care Agency is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

We gave the provider 2 days’ notice because we needed to ensure they would be available to assist us with the inspection.

Inspection activity started on 6 March and ended on 3 April 2023. We requested a range of documents that were sent to us by the provider between 6 March and 16 March 2023. We visited the office location on 9 and 14 March 2023 to see the registered manager and to review further records related to the service. We made calls to people, their relatives and care staff between 15 March and 22 March 2023.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. This included any significant incidents that occurred at the service. The provider was not asked to complete a recent Provider Information Return (PIR) prior to this inspection. A PIR is information providers send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.

We contacted the local authority commissioning team and reviewed the previous inspection report. We also reviewed the information of concern that had been shared with us that led us to carry out this focused inspection. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We reviewed a range of records related to 11 people’s care and support. This included people’s care plans, risk assessments, medicines records and 8 staff files in relation to recruitment. We reviewed records related to the management of the service, which included safeguarding incidents, quality assurance records, minutes of staff meetings and a range of policies and procedures.

We also reviewed electronic call monitoring (ECM) data for 87 people for the month of February 2023. An ECM system is where care workers log in and out of their calls, and the information is recorded.

We spoke with 6 staff members. This included the registered manager, the office manager and 4 care coordinators.

We contacted a number of care workers, via email and telephone. We also asked the registered manager to share a questionnaire with all active care workers to give them an opportunity to give us feedback about their experience of working for the service. We received feedback from 40 care workers.

We contacted 45 people and managed to speak with 12 people and 13 relatives. We also spoke with 3 health and social care professionals who had experience of working with the service.

We continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence found after the inspection. We looked at further quality assurance records, accidents and incidents, a service improvement plan and correspondence with a range of health and social care professionals related to pe

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 13 May 2023

About the service

City Care Agency is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. It provides a service to older people, some living with dementia. It also supports people with physical disabilities and people with mental health needs.

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 provider was supporting 95 people across 5 London Boroughs with personal care.

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

People and their relatives were very happy with how their care and support was being delivered and felt staff kept them safe and had a good understanding of their care needs.

People’s care was regularly monitored to ensure it was delivered within a specific timeframe and no visits were missed. People and their relatives did not highlight any consistent timekeeping concerns.

There were monitoring systems in place with regular opportunities for people and their relatives to give feedback about their care. This helped the provider to identify any issues with the quality of the service.

Where issues were raised, the management team worked closely with people, their families and the relevant health and social care professionals to resolve them.

People and their relatives were positive about the management of the organisation and told us the management team listened to them, were approachable and tried to be as flexible as possible. We saw samples of compliments that highlighted staff went above and beyond at times in the support they provided.

People were supported by staff who were very positive about working for the organisation and felt valued as part of the team. Staff told us they were well supported and were confident their issues would be listened to.

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 the service was good (published 30 April 2019).

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to recruitment practices, the reporting of safeguarding incidents, allegations of missed calls and the overall management of the service. This included concerns around staff pay, which was shared with the relevant government agency. 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.

We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from these concerns. 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 City Care Agency on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.