Professional Carers

Updated 18 March 2023

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. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by one inspector 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

Service and service type

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses, flats and specialist housing.

This service provides care and support to people living in specialist ‘extra care’ housing. Extra care housing is purpose-built or adapted single household accommodation in a shared site or building. The accommodation is bought or rented and is the occupant’s own home. People’s care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for extra care housing; this inspection looked at people’s personal care service.

Registered Manager

This 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. 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.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

This inspection was unannounced.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed all the information we held about the service. We also obtained information about the service from the local authority and local safeguarding teams. The provider was not asked to complete a Provider Information Return (PIR) prior to this inspection. A PIR is information providers send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with a total of 18 people and their relatives about their experience of the care provided. We spoke with 11 members of staff including the registered manager, operations director, nominated individual, care coordinators, trusted assessors and care staff.

We looked at a range of records. These included 10 people's records related to their care and support, medicines records, 6 staff recruitment records and records related to the auditing and monitoring of the service.

Updated 18 March 2023

About the service

Professional Carers is a domiciliary care service providing care and support to people living in their own homes. At the time of our inspection the service was providing personal care to 277 people. The service supported 25 people who lived in their own home in a specialist Extra Care Housing called St Oswald's Court in Birkenhead.

People's experience of using this service and what we found

Professional Carers had an open and transparent culture resulting in an effectively organised, supportive and well-run service. The registered manager and nominated individual were clear about how the service should be provided and they led by example.

People's needs were comprehensively assessed before they started using the service, people and their relatives were fully involved in the assessment and care planning processes. Staff had established supportive relationships with people and knew them extremely well. Staff provided people with person centred care. Staff supported people to access healthcare professionals when required and supported people to manage their medicines safely.

The provider was driven in supporting their staff and provided access to resources to benefit the health and wellbeing of employees. Care workers spoke very highly about working for the service. People told us their care workers were caring and kind. Care workers had a good understanding of how to support people in a way that promoted their privacy, dignity and independence.

The provider had systems in place to protect people from the risk of abuse and people told us they felt safe. Risk assessments were completed to help identify and minimise risks people faced. Infection control measures were safe. Steps were taken to learn lessons when things went wrong.

The provider had addressed issues identified from the last inspection and internal quality assurance audits relating to medicine and care records were well embedded and used to drive improvements identified at the last inspection.

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

Rating at last inspection and update

The last rating for the service was Requires improvement (published on 29 January 2021).

The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good based on the findings of this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Professional Carers on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.