Updated 11 July 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 also provides care and support to people living in specialist 'extra care' housing. Extra care housing is purpose-built or adapted single household accommodation in a shared site or building. The accommodation is rented and is the occupant's own home. People's care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for extra care housing; this inspection looked at people's personal care and support service. At the time of the inspection 98 people were receiving the regulated activity of personal care .
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 we needed to be sure that they would be in.
Inspection activity started on 4 June 2019 when the ExE made telephone calls to people and their relatives. We visited the office location on 12 June 2019 to see the registered manager, speak to 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 eight people and six relatives of people who received a service. We also spoke with four staff members, the registered manager and the area manager. 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.