Archived: Community Pastimes Hartlepool

Community Pastimes Hartlepool is registered as a domiciliary care service to provide personal care for older people and younger adults. The aim of the service to enable people to access and enjoy hobbies, interests and recreational activities in the community.

At the time of the inspection there were 40 people receiving the regulated activity of personal care. The registered manager said of the regulated activity, “It’s as and when required. It isn’t our primary function, we provide continence care as needed and we administer meds (medicines).”

A registered manager was registered with the Care Quality Commission at the time of the inspection.

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.

During the inspection we found some care records did not contain sufficient detail, one care record contained contradictions and two care records had not been updated in response following the outcome of referrals to other services such as the falls team.

The concerns we noted during the inspection had not been identified through the provider’s own quality assurance systems.

You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.

Risk assessments were completed and included measures to control and minimise the risk. A operational risk assessment and business continuity plan was in place to minimise and manage any risks to the operation of the business.

Staff understood safeguarding and explained how vigilant they were to risks due to people’s level of vulnerability whilst in the community.

Medicines were managed safely. Accidents and incidents were recorded and discussed within health and safety meetings for any lessons learnt.

People were supported by a small, consistent staff team who knew them and their relatives well. Staff were proactive in communicating with relatives, and in contacting external healthcare professionals if they felt people were unwell or needed additional support.

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 support this practice.

Relatives told us they were confident their family members were safe when being supported by staff. They felt staff treated people with respect and dignity. Staff spoke about people in a compassionate, warm and respectful manner.

A complaints policy and procedure was in place. Relatives said they knew how to complain but had not had reason to do so.

Safe recruitment practices were followed, and new staff completed a comprehensive induction before supporting people on a one to one basis.

Staff told us the training they received was comprehensive and we saw a training matrix which showed staff training was up to date. Supervision and appraisal meetings were planned for the whole year and staff said they felt well supported.