AN Oxfordshire care provider has once again been ordered to improve by the health watchdog after being plunged into special measures for the second time in two years.

Oasis Private Care Ltd, which provides home care across the county, was said to have breached the Health and Social Care Act on six separate occasions during a series of announced inspections by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in January.

The service, based in Abingdon, was rated inadequate overall.

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Inspectors said accident and incident forms had not been completed, gaps existed in drug administration records and carers regularly failed to turn up to patients’ homes on time, or sometimes not at all.

The report also said that users could not be protected from the risk of harm as the company did not have an effective system in place to ensure new staff were of 'good character'.

Inspectors also said there was an absence of effective systems to enable management to have an oversight of the quality of the service.

Oasis Private Care, which describes itself as a ‘family-owned business that provides the best possible specialist 24 hour care’, has announced it is challenging the CQC’s findings which were published this month.

The service, based in Hanney Road, had been taken out of special measures in February 2017 after making improvements following a previous CQC inspection in September 2016.

However, inspectors said in January that these improvements had not been sustained.

An Oasis spokesperson said: “Oasis’s paramount aim is to provide excellent care to service-users and there are currently several activities that are underway and aimed at improving the service.

“Oasis also values and respects processes – including that of Care Quality Commission – that aim at improving the quality of service provision.

“As regards the recent inspection and subsequent CQC report, Oasis challenged and continue to challenge the conclusions reached in the CQC report.

“Oasis challenged the CQC report on procedural and substantive grounds.

“The reasons for challenging the report relate mainly to the manner in which Oasis was inspected, the nature of the evidence used against Oasis and how it was evaluated.

“Because this is an ongoing case, we are not at liberty to go into the substantive details.”