Inspectors said people “were treated with kindness and compassion”
Sylvan Home Care Services(Image: Google Street View)
A Wirral care service was found to have breached two rules as staff were found to be working excessive hours to cover shifts.
Sylvan Home Care Services’ Bromborough branch provided personal care for 30 people in their homes at the time of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in February and March. The report, published May 29, found the home requires improvement overall with only one area of the home found to be good.
Two breaches were found in relation to staffing and governance. The CQC said: “The provider did not always ensure people’s care needs were met in an effective way. Governance systems were not always effective enough to monitor and improve the quality of the service.”
The report added: “There was no effective oversight in place to monitor missed, late and cancelled calls. Some people’s private information was not always secure.”
However it also found: “People were treated with kindness and compassion. The provider supported staff wellbeing and staff felt supported to give feedback and were treated equally, free from bullying or harassment.
“Staff understood their roles and responsibilities. Leaders were visible and supportive, helping staff develop in their roles.”
Inspectors also said in their report that: “People and their relatives spoke positively about the care they received from Sylvan Home Care Services. They told us they felt listened to by the provider and were treated with dignity and respect.
“People were referred to other health professionals and support was given to people when required. People told us staff were considerate, sought consent to make sure people felt involved in their care decisions.
“People were treated as individuals, and with kindness, compassion and dignity.”
One of the key issues raised was staffing. The CQC said: “The provider did not always make sure staffing deployment was effective and proportionate. We saw some staff worked excessive hours over a short period of time, and this impacted the safe delivery of care.
“Additionally, we saw poor practices for recording calls log in and log out times for multiple calls which did not match the planned times. With staff completing a large amount of work hours and inaccurate call logs the provider could not be assured of their processes and could not be certain all planned calls were being completed safely as agreed.
“Staff were able to complete calls due to consistent cancellation of calls. The rotas we reviewed illustrated, calls with no travel time between them, double up calls within limited or no overlap and this was a failure of the management of the service and in particular the coordination and deployment of staff.
“The manager told us due to difficulties of managing staff hours and the numbers of people they support meant they could not manage the schedules efficiently. Although the manager told us they were aware of this issue we could not find evidence any meaningful work to address these issues had taken place.
“This meant that the service was being coordinated around the staff’s availability and not the people using the service. This was a breach of Regulation 18, staffing.
“We shared our concerns with the provider, and they told us they would take immediate action. The provider made sure there was qualified, skilled and experienced staff, who received effective support, supervision and development.”
Sylvan Home Care Services was approached for comment.