A POOLE home care service subject to a snap inspection after concerns were raised, was found to be offering an unsafe service to vulnerable people it looks after.

24 Home Care Services Ltd, based at Dunyeats Road, Broadstone was visited by Care Quality Commission inspectors unannounced, who found the agency to have ineffective management and systems, requiring improvement in four out of five services.

At the time of the inspection it employed care workers to provide live-in care to nine people in their own homes and personal care to 14 adults at home.

Following two further days of inspection a number of breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 were found.

The 16 page report included eight areas where legal requirements were not being met and where the CQC required the agency to send a report on future action.

However the report said: "We found no evidence of poor care delivery." And comments from relatives was that they provided a "personalised, caring service".

But medicines were not managed safely because care workers had not received suitable training and their competency to give medicines had not been properly assessed and planned for, said the report.

Systems to manage risk and ensure people were cared for in a safe way were ineffective. The agency did not have effective systems in place safeguarding adults from abuse.

"The agency had failed to recognise two incidents as potential abuse and had therefore not made alerts or protected people from further abuse," the report said.

Suitable steps had not been taken to ensure that staff were suitably trained and supervised and consent to receive care and treatment was not properly recorded.

Care planning systems were not robust, resulting in care workers providing care and meeting needs that had not been fully assessed and planned for, said the report.

Deborah Ivanova, CQC's head of inspection for adult social care said: "If we find that a service requires improvement, we will expect them to provide us with a full plan setting out how they will address the issue. We will share our findings with local commissioners, and we will return in due course to check that they have made the required improvements."

The agency was contacted for a comment but nothing had been received by the time we went to press.