20 April 2023
During a routine inspection
Fairolive is a care agency, providing care to people living in their own homes. In total at the time of our inspection, Fairolive provided care to 58 people. 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. Fairolive had a satellite office located in Sussex. The care provided to people in that location was managed by the main office. At the time of our inspection, 48 people received 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 people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.
At the time of the inspection, the location did not care or support for anyone with a learning disability or an autistic person. However, we assessed the care provision under Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, as it is registered as a specialist service for this population group.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Right Support:
People were encouraged with their independence and enabled to make their own decisions around their care.
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.
People were provided with food appropriate for their needs and staff worked with external professionals to ensure people received health care when they needed it.
People were supported by staff who were able to recognise potential signs of abuse and knew who to report these to. Where accidents and incidents occurred, staff recorded these and appropriate action was taken to help protect people from continued harm.
Right Care:
People were cared for by staff who showed them respect and dignity. People said they had good relationships with staff and staff took time to speak with them.
People had cared plans and they were given the opportunity to be involved in them. People’s preferences were recorded and people said staff knew how they liked their care.
People were supported by staff who went through a robust recruitment process and were trained for their role.
People were cared for by staff who understood their individual risks. Where people had specific health conditions, staff were provided with guidance on how to respond to these.
Right Culture:
Although improvements had been found since our last inspection, management still had further work to do to ensure those improvements were embedded into daily practice to enable them to provide a consistently high-quality service.
People told us staff timekeeping was poor. People and relatives also said they had experienced missed calls.
There was a lack of robust delegation within the service and despite management being aware of national guidance around Right support, right care, right culture, staff had not undertaken training in learning disabilities or autism.
The stability of staffing had improved since we last visited the agency and monthly training sessions on specific topics was being rolled out by management. The agency worked with external health and social care agencies to support people’s care.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection and update
The last rating for this service was Requires Improvement (report published 30 March 2022) and there were breaches of regulation.
The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve.
At this inspection we found improvements had been made however, the provider remained in breach of Regulation 17 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service and to follow up on the shortfalls we found at our last inspection.
Enforcement
We have identified a breach of regulation in relation to good governance within the agency.
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.