A CARE company in Barry has had its contracts with the Vale of Glamorgan council cut, with the authority citing unsatisfactory safety standards as the reason for the termination.

But the management at Gabriel's Care, based on High Street, in Barry, have hit out at the "unfair" decision saying it has been served with little notice and without a return visit to inspect the improvements they say have been made since a previous inspection in December 2015.

The Barry & District News also received several phone calls from clients and their families who were concerned about the prospect of being forced to move to a different care company at short notice.

The report into the December inspection, carried out by the Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales (CSSIW), describes various shortcomings at Gabriel's, including failings by management to "operate and manage the agency with sufficient care, competence and skill".

The report also listed "failures to provide safe systems for medication to be prompted or given", "failures to provide continuity of care" and "failures to provide the name of the care worker who is to deliver care to the service user or their representative at their request" among the chief concerns of the CSSIW inspectors.

Speaking about the decision to pull the council's contracts with Gabriel's, councillor Bronwen Brooks, the cabinet member for social care and heath, said: “The council’s social services team have been working with Gabriel’s Care in recent months to help them to improve their care practices. 

"However, we do not consider that they have made sufficient improvements for us to consider the care they provide to their clients to be satisfactory.

"Specifically we do not believe that the systems to ensure the safety of citizens meet the required standard."

Cllr Brookes added that arrangements were being made for the care packages currently being delivered by Gabriel’s Care to be provided by alternative means - including the option to use the Direct Payment method of choosing their own care provider.

But a spokesman for Gabriel's Care hit out at the decision saying that the company were "urgently obtaining legal advice" about the termination.

He said the company had been working to address the concerns that were identified during previous inspections "to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our clients is being met".

"The standard and quality of care has remained our priority throughout this period," he said. "And this is reflected by the way in which our clients see the staff and agency, and the responses we have received from them since learning of the forthcoming changes."

The spokesman said that news of the terminations has had an "unbelievable" effect on their clients, causing many of them "great distress".

Angeline George is the director of Gabriel's Care. 

She said: "We proposed alternative arrangements including another agency stepping in for a six month period but these were refused.
"This is not the same care agency as a year ago and I want people to know the hurt that has been caused to people by this decision."

Client Tony Wiggins - the chair of the Cardiff and Vale Branch of the Multiple Sclerosis Society - said he had never had a problem with the care he has received in his nine years with Gabriel's.

"I am outraged at the treatment that I have received and that Gabriel's have received," he said. "I've always been very happy with the care that I have received, the staff have always been very good. It should be my right to choose the care agency I use."