Archived: Carewatch (Poole)

Updated 18 March 2017

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.

The inspection took place on 14 February 2017 including visits to five people who use the service. We told the service two working days before our visit that we would be coming to ensure the people we needed to talk to would be available. This inspection was conducted by two inspectors and another inspector who contacted nine people who used the service and gained their views over the telephone.

We spoke with eight members of staff, the registered manager, deputy manager, area manager and the provider’s head of quality. We checked five people’s care and medicine records in the office and with their permission, the records kept in their home when we visited them. We also saw records about how the service was managed. These included four staff recruitment and monitoring records, staff rotas, training records, audits and quality assurance records as well as a range of the provider’s policies and procedures.

The registered manager sent us additional information in relation to the quality assurance monitoring systems, staff training and their improvement plan.

Before the inspection, we reviewed the information we held about the service; this included information we had received from the local authority who commissions the service.

We reviewed the information we held about the service, for example, statutory notifications. A notification is information about important events which the provider is required to tell us about by law.

Updated 18 March 2017

This inspection was announced and took place on 14 February 2017. We told the provider two working days before our visit that we would be coming to ensure that the people and staff we needed to talk to would be available.

Carewatch Poole provides personal care and support to people who live in their own homes. At the time of our inspection they were providing personal care to approximately 100 people.

Carewatch Poole has a registered manager in post. 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 last inspection in September 2016 the service was not meeting the requirements of the regulations and CQC took enforcement action for the repeated breaches of the regulation we found. The service received an overall rating of Inadequate and the provider was placed into special measures by CQC.

At this inspection action had been taken by both the registered manager and provider, there were significant improvements and the breaches in the regulations had been met. We were not able to tell at the time of the inspection whether the improvements we found could be successfully embedded and sustained. We will review the impact of these improvements further at our next inspection.

People told us they did not always have a consistent staff team and that the communication between themselves and the office still needed to improve further. These were areas for improvement.

Some people received care and support in a personalised way. Staff knew people well and understood their needs. There were care plans in place so that staff knew what care and support to provide to people. We found that people received the health, personal and social care support they needed and any risks were managed.

Staff were caring and treated people with dignity and respect. People and staff had good relationships. People told us they liked all of their care workers.

People told us they felt safe and relatives said their family members were safe with staff and they had confidence in staff.

There were systems in place to safely manage and administer medicines for people. Staff had been trained in the safe administration of medicines.

Staff had an understanding of legislation designed to protect people’s rights and were clear that people had the right to make their own choices.

People and their relatives knew how to raise concerns or complaints. People and relatives were regularly consulted by the service.

Staff received an induction and core training so they had the skills and knowledge to meet people’s needs. There were enough staff employed and staff were safely recruited.

The culture within the service was personalised and open. There was a clear management structure and staff, relatives and people felt comfortable talking to the managers about any issues and were sure that overall any concerns would be addressed. There were systems in place to monitor the safety and quality of the service provided and share any learning both in the branch and across the organisation.