Ethica Care Hemel Hempstead & St Albans

At the time of this assessment, Ethica Care Hemel Hempstead and St Albans were supporting 74 people across reablement and traditional homecare, of those 40 people received a regulated activity. Reablement is a short-term, goal-focused, service designed to help people regain independence in daily activities like washing and dressing particularly after a hospital stay, illness, or fall.

The service was registered to provide support to autistic people and people with a learning disability. Although at the time of this inspection no person was receiving personal care we have assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted.

There were 3 breaches of regulation identified at this inspection which were in relation to safe care and treatment, safeguarding and good governance.

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

The provider overall had not ensured effective systems were in use in relation to monitoring and improving quality and safety. This had resulted in shortfalls with the oversight of the service and issues related to care visits, call monitoring, medicines administration, incident and safeguarding reporting, reviews of care and care planning and auditing key areas of the service. This lack of oversight meant staff and people received an inconsistent and at times poorly planned approach to providing and receiving care.

There were enough staff employed to meet people’s needs, but the deployment of staff meant people experienced delays and a lack of consistency. Staff had attended a range of training subjects, but many staff had not received training relevant to their role.

People’s care was not always planned with them, reviewed when needed and did not assess identified risks to mitigate the risk of harm. The systems in place at that time did not support care planning that ensured both safety and that people were at the centre of their care.

We received varying feedback about the management team. Communication was a recurrent theme that staff and people felt required improvement.

There was a new manager in post since October 2025. They were aware of the improvements needed and shared with us their plans for improvement. At the time of this inspection, we were unable to look at those improvements as they had yet to be implemented or had not been in place long enough to assess their impact. The new manager at the time of the inspection had not submitted to CQC an application to register as the manager for the service.