Care Staff Services Ltd

The service is a domiciliary care agency and provides personal care to people living in their own homes. Not everyone was receiving personal care. CQC only inspects where people are receiving the regulated activity personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we consider any wider social care provided. At the time of this assessment 108 people were receiving support with personal care.

The assessment was prompted due to ongoing concerns being received regarding the management of the service, and to follow up on our previous assessment completed in June 2025, when the service was rated inadequate. At this assessment we found breaches of 6 regulations relating to person-centred care, gaining consent, safe care and treatment, good governance, staffing and fit and proper persons employed.

Since our last assessment in June 2025, a new Nominated Individual had taken over responsibilities for the service. Following this transition, a new manager was appointed to work alongside the existing management team. However, over a short period of time the majority of the management team had left the service. This meant the new manager and 1 care co-ordinator were left to oversee the care of 108 people. This presented a significant risk due to the manager being relatively new and not being aware of people’s needs, the systems in place or of staff skills and knowledge. Despite these concerns, the provider had failed to implement contingency plans to ensure continued management oversight of the service and robust business continuity plans. This meant there was a risk people would not receive the care they required in the event of further breakdown of the management team or an emergency situation.

There was a lack of quality assurance measures to identify and address concerns and to ensure action was taken. Whilst the manager acknowledged significant improvements to the service were required, the provider had failed to implement an effective and detailed improvement plan to identify shortfalls, prioritise actions and embed learning.

Although people had support plans in place, these lacked guidance for staff regarding people’s care and information about health conditions, communication needs, risks to their safety, and end of life care planning. Information regarding people’s life histories and things which were important to them was not consistently recorded. These concerns presented a barrier to people receiving safe, effective and responsive care from staff they trusted. The provider was not compliant with the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA). People’s capacity to make decisions were not always decision specific and best interests’ decisions were not completed in line with MCA principles.

Recruitment practices were not robust which put people at risk of being supported by staff who were not suitable. Staff felt there had been some improvement in the way the service was managed although there were on-going concerns regarding how they were able to share feedback in a transparent way. The manager told us they were working with staff to establish trust and reporting protocols.

This service remains in special measures. The purpose of special measures is to ensure that services providing inadequate care make significant improvements. Special measures provides a framework within which we use our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of the care they provide. In instances where CQC have decided to take civil or criminal enforcement action against a provider, we will publish this information on our website after any representations and/or appeals have been concluded.