Everycare West Kent

We carried out this inspection on 10 March 2025 and looked at the key questions of Safe and Well-led. The inspection was triggered by safeguarding concerns around people’s care and support. Everycare West Kent is a domiciliary care service providing care to people in their own homes. The service was providing care to 27 people. The provider had failed to ensure there were robust governance and quality assurance systems in place. This meant the service was unable to clearly identify if staff failed to arrive at a call, arrived on time or stayed the full time. We found instances where people did not receive the correct support with staff not always arriving in a timely way or staying the right amount of time. This had not been identified by the provider. In addition, audits had failed to identify shortfalls at the service, such as poor medicines administration practices and lack of detail and information in people’s care plans to help ensure staff knew as much as they could about a person before starting to provide care. There was a poor culture within the service resulting in the manager finding it difficult to arrange or convene staff meetings or supervisions. This meant staff did not always have the opportunity to meet together, or speak with their line manager about their role, their development or training requirements. The provider had not ensured there was always a registered manager in a place which is a requirement of registration, although there was now a manager who was registering with CQC. Notifications of accidents, incidents or safeguarding concerns had not been reported to us as required. The provider was in breach of 3 regulations relating to safeguarding people from abuse, safe care and treatment and good governance. Improvements were being made with the introduction of an electronic care planning and monitoring system and the manager felt they were starting to tackle the poor culture. Staff said they enjoyed working as a carer.