We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it. At the time of the inspection, the location did not care or support for anyone with a learning disability or an autistic person. However, we assessed the care provision under Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, as it is registered as a specialist service for this population group.
About the service
North Home Care is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to 31 people at the time of the inspection. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. The Care Quality Commission (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
Right Support:
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. Staff supported people to take risks where this was appropriate. Plans were in place to minimise risks to people to enable people to be supported with their choices.
People were invited to provide feedback about the service and their support on a regular basis. People told us they felt staff listened to them.
Right Care:
People’s care plans reflected their needs and the service had sufficient staff to meet people’s needs. Staff had undertaken the training they needed to support people effectively.
Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse and how to raise concerns. There were sufficient infection control processes in place to keep people safe. The provider checked to ensure staff were following good hygiene practices.
Where people received support with their medicines people received their medicines as prescribed.
Right Culture:
Auditing had improved and was used to support and drive forward improvements. Where improvements were identified action was taken. Staff were happy in their role and told us they felt well supported.
The service worked in partnership with other organisations to improve outcomes for people.
Incidents were reported and action taken to minimise risks to people. Staff were recruited safely.
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 requires improvement, (published on 09 July 2019). There were no breaches of regulation. At this inspection we found the service had improved.
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.
The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good based on the findings of this inspection.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for North Home Care on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement and Recommendations
Since the last inspection we recognised that the provider had failed to ensure their rating was displayed. This was a breach of regulation, and we issued a fixed penalty notice. The provider accepted a fixed penalty and paid this in full.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.