Updated 14 December 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 Health and Social Care Act 2008.
Inspection team
The inspection was undertaken by one inspector.
Service and service type
This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes.
This service is required to have a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. 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.
At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.
Notice of inspection
We gave the service 3 working days’ notice of the inspection. This was because we needed to be sure that a member of the management team would be in the office to support the inspection. Inspection activity started on 15 November 2022 and ended on 18 November 2022. We visited the office location on 15 November 2022.
What we did before the inspection
We did not ask the provider to send us a Provider Information Return prior to this inspection. This is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. However, we offered the registered manager the opportunity to share information they felt relevant with us at this inspection.
The inspection was informed by other information we had received from and about the service. This included feedback from the local authority and notifications from the provider. A notification is information about important events, which the provider is required to send us by law. We used information gathered as part of monitoring activity that took place in October 2022 to help plan the inspection and inform our judgements. We used all this information to plan our inspection.
During the inspection
We received feedback from 8 relatives about their views of the service. We looked at 4 people’s care records to check that the care they received matched the information in their records. We reviewed 4 staff files to see how staff were recruited and looked at training records. We looked at the systems the provider had in place to ensure the quality of the service was continuously monitored and reviewed to drive improvement. We also received feedback from staff that worked at the service and the registered manager.
After the inspection
We asked the registered manager to email copies of audits they undertook so that we could see how the provider monitored the service to drive improvements. We also reviewed some of the provider’s policies. All these documents were sent this to us within the required timeframe.