Inspectors rate care at home as adequate
The East Renfrewshire Care at Home Service has received a middle of the road report following its latest inspection.
Two inspectors carried out an unannounced visit to the home care team - operating from Barrhead Health Centre before branding the service as adequate.
They visited 40 people using the service and eight of their friends and family members, spoke with staff and management, observed practice and daily life and reviewed documents over a 15-day period.
Publishing its findings, the watchdog rated the service as ‘adequate’ across all four areas it was assessed on.
Key messages from the report included people were supported to live safely and independently at home and that saff were kind, caring, and compassionate.
However, it also found some people experienced a lack of consistency with their care and that care planning needed to improve to promote people’s health and wellbeing.
In evaluating quality, the Care Inspectorate uses a six-point scale where one is unsatisfactory and six is excellent; the care at home service was given a score of three in leadership, supporting people’s wellbeing, staff performance and care planning.
Feedback from clients and their relatives was “generally positive”, with one service user telling inspectors: “I don’t know what we’d do without the carers. Nothing is too much for them and they’ve become like an extension of the family.”
However, several people told about a “lack of continuity”. There were issues around the timing of visits, the high volume of different carers that people receive, and carers having varied understanding of people’s needs and wishes.
One client told the inspectors: “The regular carers are fantastic, but sometimes it’s like strangers who arrive and they don’t know us. It has got better recently, but it’s been frustrating”.
Inspectors noted this “presented a risk to people’s quality of care and morale”.
East Renfrewshire Council Care at Home Service is registered to provide a care to adults and older people living in their own homes.
It also offers a telecare service that aims to promote people’s independence and safety at home, and enables people to summon assistance in an emergency at any time.
At the time of the inspection, the service was providing home care to 499 people with approximately 3,000 people being supported by telecare.
It was noted East Renfrewshire Council Care at Home Service was undergoing a period of transition after experiencing a significant increase in service demand and staff turnover since their last inspection.
A spokesperson for East Renfrewshire Health and Social Care Partnership said:
“We are pleased that the Care Inspectorate has reported that our service users value the caring and friendly nature of staff, the support to remain independent at home, and the ongoing social contact from regular visits.
“The Care Inspectorate also recognises that we are already proactively working on the areas they have noted for improvement, with an acknowledgement that the service needs time to embed these improvements.
“We will continue to work hard to improve the service for both our staff and service users, and are confident it is going in the right direction.”
They added: “The social care landscape at a local and national level is extremely challenging, particularly around recruitment and staff retention, and the HSCP is facing a significant funding gap in 2024/25.
“Despite this, we will continue to invest in our care at home service to deliver the best care we can.”