U&I Care Limited

Updated 8 August 2019

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

The inspection team

The inspection was carried out by one inspector.

Service and service type

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats.

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

Due to the nature of the service, we informed the provider of our inspection plan. This is because the provider operates a number of care homes as well as the domiciliary care service using one large staff team. For the domiciliary care agency, inspection activity started on 26 March 2019 and ended on 01 July 2019. We visited the office location on 08 May 2019.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed all the information we held about the provider and spoke with the commissioning authority. We reviewed the notifications sent to us from the provider in line with their legal responsibility. The provider was not asked to complete a provider information return prior to this inspection. This is information we require providers to send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We took this into account when we inspected the service and made the judgements in this report.

During the inspection

During the inspection, we visited the office, we looked at one person’s care records and checked records relating to staff administration of medicines. We checked audits and quality assurance reports, incident and accident records, as well as the recruitment supervision and training information for nine staff, as staff work across all U&I Care Limited services. We met with three people receiving support in a social setting and observed the care and support that they received, as well as the relationships between people using the service and staff. We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care and support to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us.

We spoke at length with 22 members of staff who work across all U&I Care Limited services including, support workers, senior staff, the service manager, the registered manager, a director, human resources and the behaviour support psychologist.

We spoke and met with three of the five people supported by U&I Care Limited, we spoke with one relative and a social worker linked to two people receiving support.

Updated 8 August 2019

About the service

U&I Care Limited is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care and support to people living in their own houses in the community or within the family home. It provides a service to adults. The service was supporting 5 people at the time of the inspection.

The service has been developed and designed in line with the principles and values that underpin Registering the Right Support and other best practice guidance. This ensures that people who use the service can live as full a life as possible and achieve the best possible outcomes. The principles reflect the need for people with learning disabilities and/or autism to live meaningful lives that include control, choice, and independence. People using the service receive planned and co-ordinated person-centred support that is appropriate and inclusive for them.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

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 this practice.

The outcomes for people using the service reflected the principles and values of Registering the Right Support by promoting choice and control, independence and inclusion. People's support focused on them having as many opportunities as possible for them to gain new skills and become more independent.

Care and support was delivered on an individual basis as people either lived on their own or with family members. Care, support and activities were planned around individual likes and dislikes. People were encouraged to participate in activities that were meaningful to them and to experience new activities with varying degrees of success due to people’s general dislike of change.

We were told of several examples when the service had been exceptional in responding to people’s needs. For one individual their social worker told us it would have a life changing effect. People had opportunities to connect with other people using the U&I Care Limited services with attendance at social clubs, discos, dinner clubs and with the wider community. We saw that in some cases people had forged friendships with others.

During the inspection of the service we were told that some difficulties had arisen between family members and the service. A relative reported that this was usually around information sharing and activities. We were told that this had improved of late. We discussed with the manager ways to improve this aspect of the service. The possibility of working groups as a way forward to manage family’s expectations in line with legislation as people transitioned from children’s service to adult services.

People felt safe with the support from staff and showed us in their own individual ways that they were happy with their care. The service worked very hard to promote inclusivity and people’s diversity was embraced, staff demonstrated this with their knowledge of how people communicated and made their needs and wishes known.

Staff told us that they were proud to work for U&I Care Limited and we saw there was a genuine affection for the people they supported. There were processes in place for staff to access support at any time and we were told by staff that they felt supported by the management team. Records clearly showed that staff also received formal supervision, appraisal and regular training.

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

Rating at last inspection (and update)

The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 12 June 2018) and there were two breaches of regulation. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.