The Care Quality Commission has rated Emmcare, a care agency in Dorset, as inadequate and taken action to protect people, following an inspection in October.
Following the inspection, CQC took action to protect people by submitting to remove Emmcare’s registration, which effectively cancels the service. Emmcare Limited did not appeal this decision and it means the service will stop carrying out personal care in the coming weeks.
Emmcare, run by Emmcare Limited, provides care in people’s own homes. At the time of inspection, 6 people were using the service.
CQC only inspects where a service provides personal care, such as support with personal hygiene, and not everyone using Emmcare received personal care.
People using the service for personal care will move to alternative providers and Emmcare Limited will work with the local authority and other partners as needed to do so.
A focused inspection was carried out to follow up on the progress of improvements they were told to make by CQC at its previous inspection.
The service’s overall rating, and the areas of safe and well-led were again rated as inadequate. Effective and responsive were re-rated as requires improvement. Caring was also not looked at during this focused inspection and retains its previous rating of good.
Neil Cox, CQC deputy director of operations in the south, said:
“When we inspected Emmcare, we were concerned to find it was being poorly managed and issues identified at our previous inspection hadn’t been addressed. This meant people using the service were still at risk of harm and their care fell below the standard they have a right to expect.
“During the inspection, we found continued breaches of regulations in relation to how people’s medicines were managed, providing safe care and treatment, and staffing.
“Leaders didn’t ensure there were enough skilled staff to support people. During the inspection, we found there wasn’t enough staff to safely support people. The registered manager acted on this by giving notice to a person who wasn’t receiving personal care, which ends their contract with Emmcare, so staff could focus on supporting others who were receiving personal care. However, this could have been addressed before our visit.
“Leaders also hadn’t ensured staff received the right supervision, training and support to provide safe care. Several staff worked on a more casual basis and the registered manager didn’t consider them as their staff. This put people at risk of harm as these staff members weren’t given training or supervision.
“Leaders also hadn’t ensured medicines were being managed safely. Medicine records and guidance for staff were inconsistent. For example, staff had failed to record how much pain relief had been given to someone, or where prescribed creams had been applied. One person’s notes said that they would apply their eye drops independently, but in another record it said staff would apply them, which put them at risk of receiving more medicine than they needed.
“It’s always a last resort for CQC to take action which may result in a service that people are familiar with closing, as we understand the distress and upset this can cause. However, people using services should receive safe, effective and high-quality care that meets their needs.
“Where that isn’t happening, we take action to support services to improve, and if they aren’t able to, take further action such as cancelling their registration to keep people safe which is what we have done here.”
Inspectors found:
- Leaders had not ensured staff completed all the training they needed, including in how to safely support autistic people or people with a learning disability, safeguarding, and the individual medical conditions of the people they cared for.
- Safeguarding concerns had not always been shared quickly and appropriately.
- Leaders had ineffective systems in place to monitor how the service was performing and act on safety risks. For example, infection risks had not been addressed and leaders had not ensured staff understood the policy.
- Staff references and background checks had not been completed prior to their employment and some criminal records checks were overdue.
- Staff did not always work well together to provide safe care that met people’s needs, although they gave positive feedback on the service.
The report will be published on CQC’s website in the coming days.