Background to this inspection
Updated
4 April 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 two inspectors and three experts by experience. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.
Service and service type: Aspire UK is a domiciliary care service providing support and personal care to people in their own homes.
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 three working days’ notice of the inspection site visit. We asked the provider to contact people who use the service to gain their consent for us to contact them by telephone. This was to enable us to seek their views about the service they receive.
Inspection site visit activity started on 27 February 2019 and ended on 28 February 2019. We visited the office location to see the manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures.
What we did: We asked the provider to complete a Provider Information Return (PIR.) This is key information providers are required to send about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections.
Our planning took into account information we held about the service. This included information about incidents the provider must notify us about, such as abuse; and we looked at issues raised in complaints and how the service responded to them. We obtained information from the local authority commissioners. We used all this information to plan our inspection.
The experts by experience spoke with 18 people who used the service and 32 family members by telephone on 27 and 28 February 2019.
We spoke with the registered person, registered manager, senior co-ordinator, a team leader, three care staff and the training officer.
We looked at the care plans and records of seven people. We looked at five staff records, which included their recruitment, induction, on-going monitoring and training. We looked at the minutes of staff meetings and records related to the quality monitoring of the service, which included complaint investigations carried out by the provider.
Updated
4 April 2019
About the service:
Aspire UK is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses or flats. At the time of the inspection there were 475 people using the service.
Not everyone using Aspire UK 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 into account any wider social care provided.
People’s experience of using this service:
¿People told us they felt safe and confident with the staff who provided their care.
¿ People told us they were happy with the care and support they received from the service. They were keen to tell us they felt involved in how their care was planned.
¿People and family members commented on the positive impact of staff being able to communicate in people’s preferred language and how this influenced the effective delivery of care.
¿ The majority of people told us they were supported by a regular core staff team. People were keen to stress the positive impact this had on the development of relationships with staff and continuity of care.
¿ Some people told us they experienced inconsistent care when they were not supported by staff who they were familiar with.
¿Care plans in some instances provided contradictory information, which had the potential for people not to receive consistent care.
¿ Risk assessments were in place to indicate when people had been identified as being at risk. However, measures to reduce the potential risk were not directly referred to in people’s care plans, which guided staff as to how they were to provide a person’s care. The provider and registered manager said they would act to improve records detailing people’s care.
¿There were sufficient staff to care for people and no one reported having experienced any missed visits to provide their care.
¿Staff liaised with health and social care professionals to maintain and promote people’s health and welfare.
¿People's care preferences and needs and the views of their relatives were considered when their care was assessed, planned and reviewed.
¿The provider had a range of systems in place to seek the views of people and their family members.
¿ The provider worked with key stakeholders to influence and develop the service and to share good practice.
¿We found Aspire UK met the characteristics of a ‘Good’ service.
Rating at last inspection:
Good. The last report for Aspire UK was published on 20 June 2016.
Why we inspected:
This was a planned comprehensive inspection based on the rating from the previous inspection. The service remained rated Good overall.
Follow up: We will continue to monitor intelligence we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our inspection programme. If any concerning information is received we may inspect sooner.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk