Updated 31 August 2019
The inspection:
• We carried out our inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. Our inspection checked whether the provider was 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.
Inspection team:
Our inspection was completed 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. Our expert-by-experience had knowledge about personal care of adults within the community.
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 younger and older adults and people with dementia.
The service is required to have a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are 'registered persons'. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run. At the time of our inspection, a manager was registered with us. The manager was also the registered provider of the service.
Notice of inspection:
We gave the service 5 days’ notice of the inspection site visit because we needed to be sure that people and staff would be in.
The Inspection site visit activity started on 26 February 2019 and ended on 1 March 2019. We visited the office location on 27 February 2019 to see the manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures.
Our inspection was informed by evidence we already held about the service. We also checked for feedback from the public, local authorities and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs).
We asked the service to complete a 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.
We spoke with four people who used the service and four relatives.
We spoke with the registered manager, a care coordinator and five three care workers.
We reviewed three care records, three staff recruitment files, and audits.
We also checked many records related to how the service was run.
We requested additional evidence to be sent after the site visit. This was received and the information was used as part of our inspection.