Updated 3 July 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 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:
This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats. It provides a service to older adults and/or younger disabled adults. Home First – Lichfield and Tamworth provide a short term reablement service. People usually have up to six weeks support following a hospital stay or other event, with the aim of supporting them to regain their independence.
Not everyone using Home First – Lichfield & Tamworth receives regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related 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 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 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because we needed to gather people’s contact details and gain their permission to contact them as part of the inspection.
Inspection site visit activity started on 3 June 2019 and ended on 4 June 2019. We visited the office location on 3 June 2019 to see the manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures. We made telephone calls to people and their relatives on 3 and 4 June to gather their views about the care they received.
What we did:
We used the information we held about the service to formulate our inspection plan. This included statutory notifications that the provider had sent to us. A statutory notification is information about important events such as deaths and serious injuries, which the provider is required to send us by law. We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return (PIR). This is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.
During the inspection, we spoke with six people who used the service and five relatives. We also spoke with the registered manager and four care staff. We reviewed the care records of four people. These included care plans, daily care records and medicines administration records where people received support with this. We looked at records relating to the management of the service. These included four staff recruitment records, incident records, training information and quality assurance records.