Total Living Care

Updated 26 April 2019

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. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team:

This inspection was carried out by one adult social care inspector.

Service and service type:

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. Not everyone using this service receives regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with 'personal care'; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. 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.

Notice of inspection:

We gave the service 48 hours' notice of the inspection visit to be sure the registered manager would be available to speak with us. We also requested to pre-arrange telephone calls with people who used the service.

This inspection took place on the 05 and 6 March 2019. On the first day of our inspection we spoke with people supported by the service by telephone. On the second day we visited the office and also spoke with staff.

What we did:

Before our inspection we completed our planning tool and reviewed the information we held on the service. This included notifications we had received from the provider, about incidents that affected the health, safety and welfare of people supported by the service and previous inspection reports.

As part of the inspection 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.

During the inspection we spoke with seven people who received support from Total Living Care and six members of staff including the registered manager.

To gather information, we looked at a variety of records. This included care plan records relating to two people who received support from Total Living Care. We also looked at other information related to the management of the service. We did this to ensure the management team had oversight of the service and they could respond to any concerns highlighted or lead in ongoing improvements.

Updated 26 April 2019

About the service:

Total Living Care is a domiciliary care agency which provides personal care to people living in their own homes. It is located in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. At the time of our visit 55 people were being supported by Total Living Care.

People’s experience of using this service:

People told us they were supported by staff who knew and consistently met their needs and provided flexible and responsive care. They told us the registered manager and staff were attentive, friendly and caring and looked after them safely. Comments included, “This is a really good service.” And, “I look forward to them coming.”

People told us they usually had the same group of staff who were reliable, arrived on time and stayed the correct length of time.

People were protected from harm and abuse by staff who received training and ongoing support and had skills, knowledge and experience required to support them. Procedures were in place to record and learn from safeguarding concerns, accidents and incidents and take action as required.

People's care and support had been planned in partnership with and fully involved them. Care records were informative and up to date. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible.

Risk assessments were in place to reduce the risk of any harm to the person. They had support needed from staff for personal care, meals and snacks, medicines and to protect them from the risk of infections.

Staff worked in partnership with other organisations to ensure they followed good practice and people in their care had good, safe healthcare and a comfortable, pain free and peaceful end of life.

Staff and people who used the service, felt valued and supported by the registered manager.

The registered manager used a variety of methods to assess and monitor the quality of the service. This helped improve any areas that were identified through their quality monitoring processes.

More information is in the detailed findings below.

Rating at last inspection:

Good. Report published 21 September 2016

Why we inspected:

This inspection was a scheduled comprehensive inspection based on the previous rating.

Follow up:

The next scheduled inspection will be in keeping with the overall rating. We will continue to monitor information we receive from and about the service. We may inspect sooner if we receive concerning information about the service.

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