Caring Folk Limited

Updated 5 January 2022

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. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection team was made up of two inspectors.

Service and service type

Caring Folk limited is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats.

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. This was because we needed to be sure that the provider or manager would be in the office to support the inspection. Inspection activity started on 25 October 2021 and ended 16 November 2021. We visited the office on 3 November 2021.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service. The provider was not asked to complete a provider information return prior to this inspection. This is information providers are required to send us with key information about the service, what it does well and improvements they plan to make. We took this into account in making our judgements in this report.

We sought feedback from the local authority, clinical commissioning group and Healthwatch. 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 this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with people using about their experience of the care provided. We spoke with the registered manager and staff members. We looked at care and medicine records, staff files for recruitment and risk assessments. We also looked at quality monitoring records relating to the management of the service, such as audits and quality assurance reports.

After the inspection

We continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence found. This included reviewing feedback about the service and quality assurance records.

Updated 5 January 2022

Care Folk Limited is a domiciliary care service which provides personal care to adults with a range of support needs in their own homes. At the time of this inspection the service was supporting 74 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

Medicines were managed safely. Risk assessments contained relevant information about people's known risks. Accidents and incidents were managed, and appropriate actions taken to prevent re occurrences. There were enough staff to meet people's needs and people told us they often saw the same staff for consistency in care.

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.

People told us they felt safe with staff and said staff were kind. People were treated with respect and dignity. People we spoke with felt their needs were being met by staff and felt confident raising any concerns with the service.

People's care needs were assessed and person-centred plans were created which included people's personal history and preferences as well as assessments of risk and what help people needed.

Staff said they felt confident raising concerns with the management team however, meetings, supervisions and appraisals had not always been recorded. Recruitment processes were not always robust due to recording issues and lack of risk assessment documentation when staff provided old DBS’s. We made a recommendation for the provider to review their record processes.

The registered manager was keen to always improve the service and had links with a variety of organisations to seek information about best practice. The service worked in partnership with other organisations and were involved in volunteer work with local community groups.

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

Rating at last inspection

This service has not yet been rated overall. The last focused inspection took place in October 2020 and the safe and well led domain were rated good.

Why we inspected

This is the provider’s first comprehensive inspection.

You can read the report from our last focused inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Caring Folk limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

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