Helping Hands - East Northumberland

Updated 18 June 2022

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. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by one inspector and two 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

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

Registered Manager

This service is required to have a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. 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.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

This inspection was announced. We gave a short period of notice to ensure we gained consent from people and their relatives to contact them.

Inspection activity started on 23 May 2022 and ended on 8 June 2022. We visited the location’s office on 24 and 26 May 2022.

What we did before inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. We sought feedback from three local authorities and professionals who work with the service. We also contacted Healthwatch to gather any views they had. Healthwatch is an independent consumer champion that gathers and represents the views of the public about health and social care services in England.

We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make.

During the inspection

We spoke with five people who used the service and 14 relatives. During our visit to the office we spoke with the registered manager, deputy manager, nominated individual, quality and clinical lead manager, a care and support officer and a senior care coordinator. We also contacted every member of the staff team via email to seek feedback and contacted a selection of these to continue conversations via telephone.

We also contacted seven care managers/social workers and local district nurse teams.

We reviewed a range of records. This included a review of 16 people's care plans and multiple medicines records. We checked five staff files in relation to recruitment. We also reviewed records related to the management of the service, which included incident reports, complaints, quality assurance checks, minutes of meetings, policies and procedures and a range of health and safety records.

After the inspection

We continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence found. We further reviewed training data, quality assurance records and policies and procedures.

Updated 18 June 2022

About the service

Helping Hands - East Northumberland is a domiciliary care service providing personal care to a range of adults with a variety of health care needs, living in their own homes. At the time of the inspection, the provider supported 305 people.

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 using this service and what we found

Staff were kind and considerate and the majority of people we spoke with would recommend the service to others.

Good infection control procedures were in place and staff followed PPE guidance.

Medicines were managed safely, and a new IT system was in place to monitor this. Care records reflected how people wished to be cared for and included clear details of how staff should do this.

People and their relatives were involved in planning their care and were encouraged to provide feedback regarding the service during reviews and surveys undertaken.

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 supported this practice.

There were enough safely recruited staff available to meet people's needs. Although it was acknowledged that at times recruitment had been slow due to nationwide shortages of care staff.

The vast majority of people, relatives and staff were positive about the changes to the organisation, including the new IT processes the provider had introduced. The provider worked with other healthcare professionals to ensure people received good quality care.

The management team monitored the quality and safety of the service. There was an improved programme of audits and checks in place.

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 5 March 2021) and there were breaches of regulations.

At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

We carried out an unannounced focussed inspection of this service on 28 January 2021. Breaches of legal requirements were found. We issued a warning notice. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve safe care and treatment and good governance.

We undertook this focused inspection to check they had followed their action plan and to confirm they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions, Safe, Responsive and Well-led which contain those requirements.

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 changed from requires improvement to good. This is based on the findings at this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Helping Hands – East Northumberland on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

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