AQS Homecare - Hampshire East

Updated 3 May 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:

• This inspection was carried out by two inspectors 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. The expert for this inspection has personal experience of caring for an older person living with dementia.

Service and service type:

• AQS Homecare-Hampshire East is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. It provides a service to older adults and younger adults including people living with dementia, a sensory impairment and a physical disability. Not everyone using AQS Homecare-Hampshire East received the 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 the manager is responsible for two services and we needed to be sure that they would be available.

Inspection site visit activity started on 11 March 2019 and ended on 14 March 2019. We visited the office location on 13 March 2019 to see the registered manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures.

What we did:

Prior to the inspection we met with the provider, operations manager and registered manager on 16 January 2019, to discuss the actions they had taken because of the repeated requires improvement rating at last inspection. We reviewed any notifications we had received from the service. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to tell us about by law.

During the inspection we spoke with 28 people and 6 relatives, the registered manager, the operations manager, the senior care coordinator and 12 care workers.

We looked at the following records;

• Ten people’s care records and Medicine Administration Records (MAR)

• Records of accidents, incidents and complaints

• Audits and quality assurance reports,

• Four staff supervision records and four staff files,

• We looked at the provider’s training matrix, supervision, appraisal and spot check matrix and training certificates in staff files.

Following the inspection, we asked for and received additional information from the registered manager and the operations manager.

Updated 3 May 2019

About the service:

• AQS Homecare-Hampshire East is a domiciliary care agency that was providing personal care to 112 people at the time of the inspection.

People’s experience of using this service:

• People told us the service had improved since the last inspection. A person’s relative said, “Everything is personalised for my Mum, we have been with AQS for 2 years now and things have definitely improved in the last 6 months to a year.” Another relative said, “I have been with the service for 3 years and things are `turning around’ especially during the last year-we used to get calls saying that no one could come as they had no available staff-but that seems to be getting sorted now.”

• People told us they received a safe and effective service. People’s needs were met by kind and caring staff and care plans described the care people required to meet their needs.

• The provider had acted to make improvements to the service and to meet their regulatory requirements. An effective system was in place to monitor and assess the service, including feedback from people and staff, and this had been used to drive continuous improvement and deliver a good quality of care.

Rating at last inspection:

• At the last inspection the service was rated Requires Improvement (18 July 2018). Following the last inspection, we met with the provider to confirm they had completed their action plan to improve all the key questions to at least good. At this inspection the overall rating has improved to Good.

Why we inspected:

• This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating.

Follow up: we will continue to monitor and inspect this service based on the information we receive.

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