Diamond Heart Health Care LTD

“Diamond Heart Healthcare is a domiciliary care service which provides personal care to people living in their own homes. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. The CQC only inspects where people receive personal care; this is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and/or support with eating and drinking. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided. At the time of this inspection the service was supporting approximately 18 people.”

“At this inspection we found 2 breaches of legal requirement in respect of staffing and good governance. The registered manager was also the registered provider of the service. This meant they are legally responsible for all aspects of the service.”

“The provider did not have a systematic approach to ensure audit, quality assurance and questioning of practice was completed consistently. Where we did see that some audit activity had been completed, it was not aways clear what actions or areas of learning flowed from such audits.”

“All care packages, where personal case was carried out, were commissioned by a local authority based in the West Yorkshire area. However, a core of staff deployed onto the local authority contract lived in the Greater Manchester area at the time of our inspection. Some staff did not drive and access to public transport was limited, this meant some staff were dependant on the registered manager to drive them to care calls and/or pay for taxi journeys. Additionally, arrangements put in place by the provider to temporarily accommodate staff in West Yorkshire for the duration of their time on duty was not fair or sustainable.”

“Newly recruited staff received an induction and completed learning that was a blend of in-person training and online e-learning. However, for staff employed by the service for 12 months or more, we saw there were gaps in required learning that had yet to be completed.”

“People were supported with their medicines where it was part of a wider package of care. Supporting information to assist staff in administering medicines showed who was responsible for the ordering, collecting and storing medicines and whether any family members would be involved in the administration of medicines. Staff were trained and were assessed as competent to administer medicines safely. However, we saw little to no evidence of audit and quality assurance activities linked to medicines management being completed in a meaningful way.”

“Before people started using the service their local authority care assessments were shared with the service. This helped to ensure peoples’ individual needs could be met. Consent to provide care was routinely obtained by staff. Where appropriate, people were supported to access GP and primary care services.”

“We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this inspection.”