Atlas Care Services Ltd Lincolnshire

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

Effective – this means we looked for evidence that people’s care, treatment and support achieved good outcomes and promoted a good quality of life, based on best available evidence.

This is the first assessment for this newly registered service. This key question has been rated Good. This meant people’s outcomes were consistently good, and people’s feedback confirmed this.

The principles of the Mental Capacity Act were not always used to provide robust mental capacity assessments where these were needed. However, people were involved in the assessment processes to manage their care, nationally recognised assessments tools were used. People were supported to manage their health and nutritional needs

This service scored 71 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The majority of the care plans we viewed showed there had been a good assessment of people’s needs. Any inconsistences we found were addressed by the registered manager straight away. People and relatives told us they had been involved with the assessment processes to ensure they had a package of care which met their needs. The operational manager told us the service had worked with the local authority to have their staff trained in the trusted assessors program, one aspect of this role is to use staff with the right training to assess new people being referred to the service for a package of care. This meant the service worked closely with the local authority to provide a more streamlined approach to people’s care.

The care plans we viewed showed the provider was using nationally recognised assessment tools to assess people’s needs. This included the Waterlow scoring tool that provides a systematic approach which monitors people’s likelihood of developing pressure ulcers and what can be done to reduce the risk.

The feedback from people and relatives on how the staff work together and with external health professionals was positive. People told us that if they were ill or needed support to get help from health professionals the staff supporting them would provide the help they needed to do this. This might be simply making sure relatives were aware their family member needed this support. If people had no relatives able to do this the care staff would help them.

Many people we spoke with managed their own wellbeing and made their own decisions on how they worked to maintain a healthy lifestyle. However, where staff needed to support people with either their mental or physical health they were aware of their responsibilities. A number of staff were able to discuss how they supported people with their diets. For example, supporting people who were diabetic to maintain a low sugar diet and encouraging them to eat regular meals.

One member of staff also told us they had visited a person whose mental health was clearly deteriorating and they were experiencing a very low mood. They told us they rang the office and stayed longer with the person to talk to them, they also arranged for an extra social call to allow

them to accompany the person out for a meal. They escalated their concerns to their line manager who alerted the relevant health professionals and alerted the other care staff who visited the person so they would monitor their mood and support them.

Staff worked with people to support them maintain and improve their health and wellbeing. We saw evidence of how staff worked with external health professionals to follow their guidance in areas such as maintaining people’s skin integrity or managing people’s diabetes. Staff knew what signs to look for that would show if people’s diabetes was not well controlled and how they should manage these situations.

One person told us how staff supported them with daily exercises as part of their care call. The exercises were important to the person to help stop limb becoming stiff and contracted.

Although staff showed knowledge of how to support people in line with the mental capacity act. There was a lack of robust mental capacity assessments for people who either lacked capacity or had fluctuating capacity. We discussed this with the registered manager who recognised there needed to be improvement in this area and during our assessment showed us evidence of how they had begun to improve these assessments.

However, people told us staff asked their permission before providing care for them, checking they were happy to receive care. Staff understood their responsibilities if someone they were supporting refused care. One member of staff said, “If a person refused (care) I would not force them, I would try to understand why and would inform the office.” Another staff member said, “It’s all around choices and making decisions and making sure people can make their own decisions when they can.” All the staff we spoke with understood the importance of documenting and communicating if people refused care so this could be monitored and ways to support the person could be found.