Excell Home Care Limited

Updated 28 August 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:

The inspection was carried out 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.

Service and service type:

Excell Home Care is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses.

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:

This inspection was announced. We gave a short period notice of the inspection because the location provides a domiciliary care service and we needed to be sure that someone would be available to support us with our inspection.

Inspection activity took place over three days, the 9, 12 and 13 August 2019. We visited the main office on the 13 August 2019.

What we did:

Before this inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service, which included correspondence we had received and any notifications submitted to us by the service. Statutory notifications are information the registered provider is legally required to send us about significant events that happen within the service. For example, where a person who uses the service has a serious injury. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return. This is information providers are required to send us with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections.

We contacted social care commissioners who help arrange and monitor the care of people using Excell Home Care Ltd service. We also contacted Healthwatch Sheffield. Healthwatch is an independent consumer champion that gathers and represents the views of the public about health and social care services in England. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During this inspection we spoke with 11 people using the service by telephone. We also spoke with the registered manager and care coordinator during our office visit and contacted support staff by telephone and email.

We looked at six people's care records. We checked a sample of medication administration records and seven staff files, which included recruitment checks, supervisions and appraisals. We also looked at other records relating to the management of the service, such as quality assurance documents.

Updated 28 August 2019

About the service:

Excell Home Care Limited is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own home. It provides a service to older adults and younger disabled adults. The agency office is based in the Mosborough area of Sheffield. At the time of our inspection the service was providing personal care for

approximately 104 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 we spoke with told us they felt safe and did not express any concerns about their safety.

At our last inspection we found the risk assessments for specific health conditions needed improving. For example, people who had diabetes. At this inspection we found action had been taken to ensure a risk assessment was undertaken for people’s specific health conditions.

Safeguarding procedures were robust and staff understood how to safeguard people.

Systems were in place to make sure managers and staff learnt from events such as incidents, concerns and investigations.

At our last inspection we found the provider did not have adequate systems in place to ensure the safe handling, administration and recording of medicines to keep people safe. We saw action had been taken by the provider to ensure medicines were managed safely at the service.

People we spoke with were satisfied with the quality care provided by the service. Some people told us they would just like their calls to be delivered consistently on time. They thought the service needed more staff to cover for unexpected staff absence so the support workers did not have to complete extra calls. We shared this feedback with the registered manager. They told us they were actively recruiting staff and we saw evidence of this at the inspection. The registered manager told us they would monitor the delivery of people’s call times so people experienced continuity of care.

The provider completed pre-employment checks for new staff, to check they were suitable to work at the service.

Staff received a range of training and support relevant to their role. Staff told us they felt fully supported and listened to. People were confident care workers had received appropriate training to meet their needs.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. Support workers understood the importance of respecting people’s diverse needs and promoting independence.

People told us support staff were respectful and treated them in a caring and supportive way.

Most people we spoke with felt confident they could raise any concerns with the office based staff and those concerns would be taken seriously. We saw complaints were managed in line with the provider’s complaints procedure.

We found the quality assurance systems in place to monitor the quality and the safety of the service had been improved since the last inspection.

Rating at last inspection:

At our last inspection Excell Home Care Limited was rated requires improvement (report published 11 September 2018) and we found two breaches of the regulation. 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 was a planned inspection based on the previous rating.

Follow up:

We will continue to monitor intelligence we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If any concerning information is received we may inspect sooner.

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