Updated 22 March 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 one adult social care inspector and an expert 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:
Caremark 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 12 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small and needed to be sure that there would be somebody in the office when we called.
The inspection activity started on 5 February 2019 when we telephoned people who used the service to gain their feedback and ended 15 February 2019 when we rang staff who worked at the service. We visited the office on 12 February 2019 to looked at records and meet the registered manager.
What we did:
Our planning considered all the 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 also contacted the local authority to request some feedback on the service but they did not commission with the service. We used all this information to plan our inspection.
During the inspection we spoke on the telephone with seven people who used the service and six members of staff who delivered care. When we visited the office, we spoke with the registered manager, the nominated individual, the service manager, a member of staff that provided staff training and member of staff that provided care. We looked at five people’s care records and a selection of other records including quality monitoring records, recruitment and training records for four staff, staff meeting minutes and accident and incident records.
After the inspection the provider sent us some additional information about staff training and supervision, dates that spot checks of staff had been completed and information relating to the future development of the service.