Stone House Care and Medical Limited

Updated 9 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:

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

Service and service type:

Stone House Care and Medical Limited is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. At the time of the inspection eight people were receiving personal care from Stone House Care and Medical Limited.

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 it is small, and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care. We needed to be sure that they would be in.

Inspection site visit activity started on 18 April 2019 and ended on 26 April 2019. We visited the office location on 18 April 2019 to see the deputy manager; and to review care records and policies and procedures.

What we did:

We used information the provider sent to us in the Provider Information return (PIR). This is information we require providers to send to us at least once annually to give us some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We looked at information we held about the service, including notifications they had made to us about important events. We also looked at other information sent to us from other stakeholders, for example, the local authority and members of the public.

We spoke with four people who used the service and two relatives. In addition, we spoke with two members of the care staff team and the deputy manager. We sampled care documentation for four people using the service and medicine records. We also looked at three staff files, staff training and monitoring of staffs caring practices along with other documents related to the management of the service. These included records associated with quality checks audits and staff duty rotas.

Updated 9 May 2019

About the service: Stone House Care and Medical Limited is registered as a domiciliary care agency providing the regulated activity 'personal care' to people who live in their own homes. At the time of the inspection visit there were eight people using the service.

People’s experience of using this service:

People who used the service and relatives told us they felt safe and staff treated them with respect. The provider had safeguarding procedures and staff understood their responsibilities to safeguard people from abuse. Risks related to people's lives had been assessed so staff had guidance in providing safe care to meet people’s individual needs. People were protected from the risks associated with the spread of infection.

There were enough numbers of staff deployed to meet people's needs. The service followed appropriate recruitment procedures to assure themselves prospective staff were suitable to work with people who used the service. People were supported with their medicines safely and to eat and drink where this was required in accordance with their care plan.

People’s needs were assessed prior to them using the service. The provider had arrangements for new staff to receive induction training. There was ongoing training for all staff. Staff were supported in various ways including regular one to one meetings with the deputy manager to ensure they could provide care effectively. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the arrangements in place supported this practice.

Staff treated people with kindness, dignity and respect and spent time getting to know them and their specific needs and wishes. Care plans reflected people's likes and dislikes and personal preferences. People and/or their relatives had discussed their care needs with staff and were involved in the care planning process.

People were aware of how they could raise a complaint or concern if they needed to and had access to a complaint’s procedure.

The management team and provider used systems to monitor the quality of the service, which included responding to feedback from people in relation to the standard of care. The management team showed a responsive approach to making ongoing improvements following visits from commissioners.

Rating at last inspection: This is the provider’s first inspection at their new location.

Why we inspected: This inspection was part of our scheduled plan of visiting services to check the safety and quality of care people received.

Follow up: We will continue to monitor the service through the information we receive until we return, as part of the 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