Inverness care at home service must beef up background checks on new staff says inspector
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A private care at home service in Inverness was given a mixed "score" after a visit from the Care Inspectorate and now must make improvements including tighter checks on the backgrounds of job applicants including asking about relevant court convictions.
We Care (Highland) Ltd was supporting more than 12 people at the time of the recent inspection.
The inspector gave key messages from the visit as:
- Staff were committed, caring, kind and respectful and had developed meaningful relationships with people.
- There was a very high level of satisfaction with the service from people receiving the service and their relatives.
- The service needed to implement robust quality assurance processes to ensure the service was consistently improving service delivery.
- Recruitment procedures needed to improve to ensure they are consistent with safer recruitment guidance.
- Staff support could be improved through comprehensive induction and ongoing training and development.
In evaluating quality, the inspectorate graded leadership and the staff team as weak areas, while support of people's wellbeing was adequate and care and support was good.
Regarding the support of people's wellbeing, the inspection report said: "While we found some important strengths, these just outweighed weaknesses. We found the strengths had a positive impact on people's experiences, however, without improvements the likelihood of achieving consistently positive outcomes for people was reduced significantly.
"Staff engaged with people in a respectful, compassionate, and kindly manner. It was clear that they knew people's needs well.
"People told us carers were kind, caring and compassionate not just to people they were supporting, but also to the families, and this was important to them."
The inspector noted that the service did not have written protocols or information to indicate what level of assistance people needed with medication.
They said: "We saw that staff administered medication for people, but these were not recorded. Where a care service takes responsibility for managing people's medication, they must ensure there are clear and accurate records showing what has been taken, refused, lost or destroyed or returned to the pharmacy so there is a clear audit trail."
This was made a requirement by the inspector.
Regarding the weak rating for leadership, the inspector noted: "This was a new service that has been operating effectively since May 2023. Quality assurance systems and processes were very limited.
"The provider advised that he was working on a development/improvement plan, but this was not in place.
"The service did not have records of accidents or incidents and they did not have a format for recording these.
"The manager regularly worked alongside most of the staff and used the opportunity to guide staff and mentor them.
"The system for staff support and supervision, a key process for quality assurance was not yet in place."
The inspector made it a requirement that by March 31, 2024, the provider must ensure that people benefit from a culture of continuous improvement and maintain a focus on improvement which protects and promotes the health, welfare and safety of people supported by the service.
