Updated 6 January 2018
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
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.
Our inspection took place on 28 November 2017 and was announced. We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of our inspection visit because it is small and the registered manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care. We needed to be sure that they would be in.
Inspection site visit activity started and ended on 28 November 2017. We visited the office location on 28 November to see the registered manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures.
Our inspection was completed by two adult social care 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. Our Expert by Experience was familiar with the care of older adults who receive support in the community.
To gather information from people who used the service and their relatives, we completed telephone interviews. We spoke with eight people and two relatives. We reviewed information we already held about the service. This included notifications we had received. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to send us by law. We also checked for feedback we received from members of the public, local authorities and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). We checked records held by Companies House and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return. 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.
The inspection was informed by feedback from questionnaires completed by a number of people who used the service. This complimented staff on the care that was received.
At our inspection we spoke with the provider’s main partner, registered manager, a care coordinator, two administrators and four care workers.
We looked at five people’s care records, four staff personnel files and other records about the management of the service. After the inspection, we asked the registered manager to send us further documents and we received and reviewed this information. This evidence was included as part of our inspection.