Updated 14 June 2019
The inspection:
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
Inspection team:
The inspection was carried out by an inspector and an Expert by Experience (ExE). An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service. Their area of expertise was older people.
Service and service type: This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats. It provides a service to older adults, people living with dementia and younger adults.
Not everyone using Choose Your Care receives a regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take in to account any wider social care provided.
The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.
Notice of inspection:
We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small, and we needed to be sure that they would be in.
Inspection activity started on 16 May 2019 when the ExE made telephone calls to people and their relatives. We visited the office location on 20 May 2019 to see the registered manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures.
What we did:
We used the information we held about the service to plan the inspection. This included checking for any statutory notifications that the provider had sent to us. A statutory notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send us by law. We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return (PIR). This is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We also reviewed any information about the service that we had received from external agencies.
During the inspection we spoke with five people and five relatives of people who received a service. We also spoke with four staff members, the registered manager and the provider. We looked at five people’s care records and medicine administration records, records of accidents, incidents and complaints and quality assurance records. We also looked at three staff recruitment records and staff training records.