16 and 20 November 2015
During a routine inspection
This inspection took place on 16 & 20 November 2015 and was announced. The provider was given 48 hours’ notice because the location provides personal care and support to adults in their own homes. Therefore, we needed to be sure that someone would be in the office.
We last inspected this service in January 2014. At the time of our last inspection the service was meeting our regulatory standards.
The service provided support to some young adults but mainly to older people living in their own homes. They provided personal care and support and for some people, this also included social care in their community.
At the time of our inspection there were 356 people receiving a service across various areas of County Durham. We saw that a small number of privately funded people also received support in Birtley, Gateshead.
The service is a medium family ran agency that had been operating for over 20 years. The service had a registered manager in post. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
We found every person had a personalised electronic care plan and risk assessment in place. Staff were aware of these risks and worked on a multi-agency basis to minimise those risks. When visited people in their own homes, we saw an up to date paper copy of their care records were kept in a file. People confirmed that they had been involved in developing their care records.
We found regular quality monitoring of the service had been undertaken. We also saw that senior support workers completed spot checks in people’s homes. This was to observe staff practice and to ensure people were treated with dignity and respect.
Although regulations relating to Mental Capacity Act and DoLS is not applicable to domiciliary care services. We saw staff had received Mental Capacity Act and DoLS training as part of the Care Certificate induction training that was provided by an accredited external organisation.
We found people’s medicines were well managed. The provider had designed a medicine recording chart that was easy to use.
On the second day of our inspection, we visited six people in their own homes. We observed staff speaking with people in kind and respectful ways.
People told us they felt their dignity and privacy were respected by staff. One person said, “The staff are great, and they have time to sit and have a chat.” Another said, “They are like my own extended family, nothing is too much for them.”
A relative told us, “The support my parent receives must be good as they would soon tell me if otherwise.”
In addition, we looked at 20 service users’ satisfaction surveys. All were consistently satisfied with the care and support they received. All said that staff usually arrived on time and stayed for the allotted time agreed.