Background to this inspection
Updated
26 November 2015
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 inspection took place on 9 September and was announced. The provider was given 48 hours’ notice because the location provides a domiciliary care service; we needed to be sure that someone would be in.
The inspection was carried out by two inspectors.
We reviewed all the other information we held about this service. This included notifications from the provider that they are required to send us by law, safeguarding alerts and information from local authorities.
As part of our inspection we spoke with eight people who used the service, six relatives and four care staff by telephone. During our office visit we spoke with nominated individual, a quality manager and the registered manager. We looked at the care records of four people to check the care they received. We looked at the files of four staff to check the recruitment process, training and the support staff received from the organisation to carry out their work. We also looked at other records associated with the running of the service including staffing rosters, complaints records and quality monitoring checks.
Updated
26 November 2015
We undertook an announced inspection of Homebased Care – Erdington office on 9 September 2015. We told the provider that we were going to visit 48 hours before our visit. This was because the service provides domiciliary care and we wanted to be sure that staff would be available.
Following our last inspection on 2 and 19 February 2015 we found that people were at risk of not having their needs met due to late and missed calls. Also we found significant shortfalls in the way the service was being managed. As a result we took enforcement action and issued two warning notices to the registered provider. Although progress had been made some further improvements were needed.
Homebased Care – Erdington provides care and support to people in their own homes. At the time of our inspection the service provided care to 120 people in their own homes.
People had been involved in the planning of their care and received care and support in line with their plan of care. People’s needs were met because they received care at the times they had agreed. People were supported to take their medicines and received food and drink at the times agreed.
People had developed good relationships with their regular staff and found staff to be caring and considerate ensuring that their privacy and dignity was maintained. People were not always happy with the service because they were not kept informed of who would be supporting them when their regular staff were not available.
People’s consent was obtained for the care provided and staff ensured that people were supported to make day to day choices about their care. Relatives were involved in making decisions for people who were unable to make decisions for themselves.
People were protected from abuse and injury because staff had the skills and knowledge to keep people safe and knew what actions to take in emergency situations.
People were able to raise concerns and generally felt they received a good response from the office staff.
There were systems in place to monitor the quality of the service provided but these were not fully embedded and did not always provide accurate information.