Knights Home Care Services Ltd

Knights Home Care Services Ltd is a service providing personal care to people living in their own homes. It provides long term, short term, and 24-hour care to people within the community. At the time of our inspection, the service supported 13 people.

Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided.

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

People were protected from the risk of abuse, harm and neglect. Staff received training in how to keep people safe and knew how to report their concerns.

People and relatives we spoke with told us they were supported by a small and consistent team of staff who were knew them well. Staff arrived on time and stayed the required amount of time.

Processes were in place to support people with their medicines if required. Infection control measures were in place including staff use of personal protective equipment (PPE). People's needs were assessed before the package of care commenced. Staff received an induction and training for their roles.

People told us the service was well led and they received person centred care. Staff and relatives we spoke with supported this and told us management were open and approachable. Management and staff were clear about their roles, responsibilities and continuously looked for ways to develop and improve the service and the level of care provided.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

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

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published 13 February 2018).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service and due to the length of time since the previous inspection.

We undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only. For those key question not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Knights Home Care Services Ltd 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.

We inspected this service on 21 November 2017. At our last inspection on 2 November 2015 we found the provider was meeting the regulations and we rated the care agency Good. Since our last inspection the service has changed provider, however was still trading under the same name and provides the same service. At this inspection we continued to rate the service as Good.

Knights is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats. It provides a service to older adults living in the North Lincolnshire and North Nottingham area. At the time of our inspection 26 people were receiving support. The service provides other support that is not regulated by us including support in the community.

The service had 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.

People felt safe when they received care and staff understood the importance of reporting any concerns. Risk assessments had been completed to ensure people were protected from risks and equipment and guidance was provided to ensure people were supported in line with their assessed needs. When people required support with their medicine, this was completed safely.

Care plans were available in people’s homes and any changes had been updated. Any changes had been communicated to the staff and checks had been completed to ensure they received the information before providing care.

There was a system in place to ensure there were sufficient staff to meet people needs. This was reviewed before any new care package was accepted. There were effective pre-employment checks of staff in place and effective supervision to support staff in their role. Staff confirmed they were well supported in their role. The registered manager felt supported by the provider and they had been involved in a range of ways to expand their knowledge. We found staff were trained in a range of areas to enable them to support people’s needs.

People who used the service and relatives had confidence in the staff and felt the service made a real difference to them remaining independent and within their own homes. This including staff respecting people’s dignity and privacy. We saw that staff obtained people’s consent before they supported them and gave them choices in their daily life to enable them to remain as independent as they wished.

People’s views had been obtained and used to develop improvements within the service. There had been no complaints; however people felt able to raise any concern’s and felt confident they would be addressed.

We saw the registered manager carried out a range of audits to identify areas for improvement to maintain the quality of the service. Developments had been made to consider how to expand the service and use technology to support the service on offer.

The registered manager had worked in partnership with different agencies and the other locations owned by the provider. They understood their registration with us and had displayed their rating in accordance with our guidance.