Home care service makes some improvements after scathing report

Improvements have been made at a Renfrewshire home care service after it received the lowest possible grading of “unsatisfactory” last month, according to a report.

The Care Inspectorate published a scathing review of Gourock’s Karma Healthcare after it found staff were not being regularly tested for Covid-19 and were putting patients at risk by frequently car sharing when undertaking visits.

The watchdog also found around a quarter of staff had not received appropriate training around coronavirus and serious concerns were highlighted around people’s care plans, recruitment procedures and visiting schedules.

But during a follow-up assessment, inspectors said they felt reassured patients were now at less risk of infection.

However, bosses were told “insufficient progress” had been made around personal care plans and inspectors said people were still not being given enough support with taking medication.

The report said: “Staff had received training in relation to Covid-19. This gave us reassurance people being supported would be at less risk of infection.

“The service had a new system for recording training. This meant the manager had a better oversight of the training.

“We found the manager had taken further steps to ensure staff take regular Covid-19 tests.

“The manager told us about new documentation that had been created for personal plans. At the time of the visit, very few personal plans had been updated.

“We saw very few care reviews had taken place by the service. The review paperwork we looked at was completed to a basic standard and did not include risk assessments. We felt insufficient progress had been made in this area.

“Some staff had undertaken medication awareness training, however we felt this was not sufficient to ensure staff had the skills to administer medication.

“We could not be assured people who need support with medications were able to take these as prescribed.”

Inspectors said a new process had been put in place to track recruitment after they had previously found staff were starting work prior to the manager receiving written references and completed checks.

“We felt the manager had better oversight of pre-employment checks and these were now being carried out,” the report added.

Karma Healthcare was contacted for comment.

By local democracy reporter Steph Brawn