Gemcare South West Plymouth

Date of assessment 10 March to 2 May 2025 Cera Plymouth is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. Not everyone using the service received a regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with 'personal care'; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided. We carried out this assessment as we had received some information of concern. At the time of this assessment, 91 people were receiving personal care from the service. We carried out onsite and offsite assessments. We assessed all quality statements under the 5 key questions; Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive and Well-led. We found 5 breaches of the legal regulations in relation to safe care and treatment, person centred care, staffing, notifications, and governance. At this assessment the overall rating was requires improvement. This is the first assessment for this service at its new office location. People did not always have risk assessments to guide safe practice. Staff had not updated care plans to reflect people’s current care needs. The service did not always have enough staff to deliver safe care. Staff did not always have sufficient travel time to get to their visits on time. People’s visit times were variable; some were early and others very late. Staff did not stay the full visit time at a high number of visits. We found instances where care staff were undertaking care tasks when they were not trained or assessed as competent. There was a lack of provider oversight. People and staff were not always listened to when they raised concerns and actions were not taken to resolve issues. Governance systems and audits were not effective in identifying or addressing areas for improvement. However, some people were happy with the care they received. Some staff told us they were happy working at the service and felt supported. An assessment has been undertaken of a service that is used by autistic people or people with a learning disability but is not registered as a specialist service. 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. People had some regular staff who knew them well. However, they also had visits from new staff who did not know them. They were not in control of their lives as systems did not support this in practice. They did not feel listened to and issues that were reported were not always acted upon. 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. This service is being placed in special measures. The purpose of special measures is to ensure that services providing inadequate care make significant improvements. Special measures provide a framework within which we user our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of the care they provide.