20 July 2022
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Allcare is a domiciliary care service providing personal care to people in their own homes. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where people receive personal care we also consider any wider social care provided. At the time of the inspection the service was supporting a total of 27 people, all of whom received support with personal care.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
People told us they felt safe and were happy with the service they received. The registered manager and staff were aware of their responsibility to raise safeguarding concerns and liaise with the local authority. The registered manager worked well with the local authority, CQC and other professionals. Safeguarding incidents, and complaints were investigated, and formal apologies had been provided.
Due to reasons outside the provider's control they had been delayed in providing information requested to help us evaluate how well they monitored the service. Review of the providers systems to assess and monitor the quality and safety of the service found these needed developing to ensure they were effective at identifying and driving improvement within the service.
At our previous inspection in April 2021 the provider's system used to arrange, and monitor visit times was not being utilised effectively to ensure people were receiving a consistent and reliable service. Analysis of a spreadsheet of planned vs actual visits for the month of June 2022 confirmed people were receiving a satisfactory service. Staff were allocated the same people in a geographical area to ensure consistency and reduce travel time and delays due to traffic. People and their relatives confirmed staff were usually were on time, within the agreed timeframe. Where on the odd occasion carers were running late people told us they were called to let them know.
People and their relatives told, us the registered manager and office staff were approachable when they contacted the office and responded to requests for information. Complaints were investigated and responded to in a timely manner.
Medicines and risks to people who used the service were managed safely.
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 20 April 2021). At our last inspection we recommended the provider needed to review its use of technology to improve the promptness of calls and drive improvements. At this inspection we found improvements had been made to ensure people received their calls within the expected timeframe.
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service. This was an ‘inspection using remote technology’. This means we did not visit the office location and instead used technology such as electronic file sharing to gather information, and phone calls to engage with people using the service as part of this performance review and assessment.
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 remained the same based on the findings of this inspection.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.