Baobab Care UK, a Birmingham-based supported living service for vulnerable people, has been placed into special measures by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) after inspectors found that basic safety checks were not being carried out. The provider, based on Alcester Street in Digbeth, was downgraded from 'good' to 'inadequate' following an inspection in July.
The service, which provides personal care to people with learning disabilities, substance abuse issues, and mental health conditions, was found to have "lost sight of the risks people faced every day," according to the CQC. The watchdog reported that essential checks to keep people safe "simply weren't happening."
Safety failures uncovered
Inspectors identified multiple serious concerns, including that staff did not always manage medicines safely, fire risks at "dirty" homes had not been properly assessed, and more than 20 staff started work without criminal record checks. In total, the CQC found six breaches of regulation covering safe care and treatment, safeguarding, staffing, fit and proper persons employed, person-centred care, and the overall management of the service.
Amanda Lyndon, CQC's deputy director of adult social care for the West Midlands, said: "When we visited Baobab Care, we found a service where leaders had lost sight of the risks people faced every day. We found the basic checks that should have kept people safe simply weren't happening. When problems did emerge, nobody was learning from them or putting things right."
Mixed experiences from relatives
At the time of the inspection, Baobab was supporting 16 people with personal care. Ms Lyndon said relatives had "mixed experiences" with the service. "While some people felt safe and told us they received care from regular staff who treated them as individuals, others said staff were task-focused and didn't consider their care needs," she added. "When people or their families complained, they often weren't listened to, and some told us they'd simply given up complaining."
Inspectors also found that staff sometimes went into services without enough colleagues to safely support people who required one-to-one or two-to-one care. There was no record of what had been prescribed, meaning staff couldn't be sure people were receiving the right treatment. Some homes were "dirty, damaged and hard to keep clean," and fire risks had not been properly assessed, posing risks of serious harm.
Regulatory action and next steps
The CQC has placed the service into special measures, which involves close monitoring to ensure people are safe while improvements are made. Special measures provides a structured timeframe for services to make improvements by, and outlines what action CQC will take if this doesn't happen. The CQC has also begun the process of taking further regulatory action to address the concerns, and Baobab Care UK Ltd has the right to appeal.
Additional findings from the inspection revealed that leaders lacked effective systems to check the quality and safety of care, so widespread problems went unnoticed and unaddressed. People's care plans didn't reflect their current needs – one person's plan still listed medication they no longer took, and another was left without the higher level of support their condition now required. More than 20 staff started work without the necessary criminal record checks, with some carrying out unsupervised visits for months. The service had commissioned fire risk assessments but hadn't completed the urgent work identified, leading inspectors to refer the service to the local fire service. Less than a third of staff had completed training on mental capacity and consent, though most staff spoken to understood what this meant in practice.
However, inspectors noted that staff usually knew people well and had built trusted relationships with them over time. The full CQC report will be published in the coming days.
