Archived: Victoria Homecare Limited

Updated 30 November 2023

The inspection

We carried out this performance review and assessment under Section 46 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act). We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements of the regulations associated with the Act and looked at the quality of the service to provide a rating.

Unlike our standard approach to assessing performance, we did not physically visit the office of the location. This is a new approach we have introduced to reviewing and assessing performance of some care at home providers. Instead of visiting the office location we use technology such as electronic file sharing and video or phone calls to engage with people using the service and staff.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by 1 inspector.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

The inspection was announced. We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because it is a small service and we needed to be sure that the provider or registered manager would be available to support the inspection.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. We sought feedback from the local authority and professionals who work with the service. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with the registered manager and gathered feedback from 6 staff. We spoke to 8 people using the service over the telephone. We looked at the care records for 3 people, including risk assessments and medicines records. We looked governance systems, policies and procedures and training records.

This performance review and assessment was carried out without a visit to the location’s office. We used technology such as telephone calls to enable us to engage with people using the service and staff, and electronic file sharing to enable us to review documentation.’ The inspection started on 12 November 2023 and ended on 16 November 2023.

Updated 30 November 2023

About the service

Victoria Home Care Limited is a domiciliary care agency providing personal acre to people in their own homes or flats. At the time of our inspection there were 78 people using the service.

People’s experience of the service and what we found:

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessment and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

At the time of the inspection, the location did not care or support for anyone with a learning disability or an autistic person. However, we assessed the care provision under Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, as it is registered as a specialist service for this population group.

Right Support:

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. People received care that was responsive to meet individual needs. People's support focused on them having opportunities to gain new skills and maintain independence. People were made to feel safe by a staff team who were trained to recognise and respond to concerns of abuse and manage people's risks in a safe way. Medicines were managed in a safe way. People received consistent support from a staff team who were punctual and who knew people's needs well. Care plans were detailed and gave staff the information they needed to be able to care and support people in the most effective way.

Right Care:

There were enough staff available to meet people's needs. There was a complaints procedure with which people were familiar and people knew how to make a complaint. Staff

worked well with other agencies to ensure people received consistent and timely support.

Right Culture:

There were systems in place to identify when things went wrong and learning adopted to prevent future occurrences. The registered manager adopted an open culture where staff felt valued and proud. The provider and registered manager worked well with other agencies and organisations to improve the quality of care people received.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was Good ( 2 November 2017).

Why we inspected

The service was inspected due to the length of time since the last inspection. For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Victoria Homecare Limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow Up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.

This was an ‘inspection using remote technology’. This means we did not visit the office location and instead used technology such as electronic file sharing to gather information, and video and phone calls to engage with people using the service as part of this performance review and assessment.