12 December 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Home Instead South East Northumberland is a is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to people in their own homes. The service supports older people, including people living with dementia. At the time of our inspection there were 60 people receiving the regulated activity of personal care.
Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided.
People’s experience of the service and what we found
People felt safe. They spoke of the consistency and reliability of carers, who always arrived on time, stayed for the duration of the call, and had their wellbeing and safety as their top priority.
The registered manager had successfully rolled out an electronic care records system. This was working well and made access to information more efficient for staff and relatives.
Care calls and staff rotas were well planned and monitored. Systems were in place to assure staff competence, ensuring people received care and support, for example with their medicines, from staff who were well trained. The registered manager had comprehensively reviewed medicines administrations practices to ensure they were as safe as practicable.
The service was exceptionally well-led. The focus on high quality person-centred care was clearly embedded, driven by the registered manager, and shared by all staff.
The culture was open and supportive. Staff felt passionate about the work they did and were consistent in their praise of how well supported they were. The provider had made a range of external connections to help improve the experiences of people, staff and to have a broader impact on social care.
People, their relatives and external professionals all agreed the service was extremely well managed. They felt closely involved in how the service was run and how best to support their loved ones to make to the most of the service provided.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection
The last rating for this service was Outstanding (published 3 October 2018).
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has remained outstanding. This is based on the findings at this inspection.
Follow Up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.