Updated 10 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 team consisted of an adult social care 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 in the community as well as specialist housing. It provides a service to older adults and younger disabled adults. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks relating to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also take into account any wider social care provided.
The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality commission. This means they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run for the quality and safety of the care provided.
Notice of inspection:
We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is a small service and we needed to make sure that someone would be available.
The inspection site visit started on 18 March 2019 and ended on 26 March 2019. It included telephone calls to staff. We visited the registered provider's office on 18 March 2019 to see the registered manager and to review care records and other records relevant to the quality monitoring of the service.
What we did:
Our planning took into account information the provider sent us since the last inspection. We also considered 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 assessed the Provider Information Return (PIR). The PIR is information providers must send us to give us key information about the service, what it does well and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.
During the inspection, we spoke with one person using the service and visited them at their home. We also spoke with the registered manager, the area manager and three members of staff.
We looked at the care records for two people and a selection of other records including quality monitoring records, recruitment and training records for two staff.