Updated 24 May 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 an inspector and an expert by experience. An expert by experience (EXE) is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service. Their area of expertise was care of people with a learning disability. They made telephone calls to people who were supported and shared lives carers.
Service and service type:
Ategi Shared Lives Scheme supports people with a range of disabilities and ages to live as part of a family unit within a domestic home. People are matched with approved carers known as ‘Shared lives carers’ (SLC). The scheme offers long-term and short-term placements with SLC, it also offers a mentoring service to people to support them to be an integral part of the community.
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 because we needed to be sure the registered manager was available to support the inspection.
Inspection site visit activity started on 23 April 2019 and ended on 29 April 2019. We visited the office location on 23 April 2019 to see the manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures. On the 24 April 2019 we sought further feedback and reviewed the information we had gathered at the office visit. The EXE attempted to make telephone calls to people on the 23, 26 and 29 April 2019.
What we did:
Prior to the inspection we requested and received a Provider Information Return (PIR). Providers are required to send us key information about their service, what they do well and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. Throughout the inspection we gave the provider and registered manager opportunities to tell us what improvements they had planned.
We reviewed notifications and any other information we had received since the last inspection. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to send us by law.
We sent emails to shared lives carers and office staff to seek feedback about the service.
When at the office we spoke with the registered manager, three office staff and one shared lives carer and the person they supported. During the course of the inspection we spoke with a further five people and two shared lives carers. We reviewed five people’s care records We looked at seven shared lives carer recruitment and training records. We read incident and accident records, complaints and complements.