22 June 2016
During a routine inspection
Nurse Plus and Carer Plus (UK) Limited is registered to provide personal care and nursing care to people living within the community. At the time of this inspection nursing care was not being provided to people in their own homes. There were 18 people receiving personal care from the service.
The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
We received positive feedback from the majority of people we spoke with who used the service and their relatives. People told us they were supported by regular staff who provided consistency of care and they were treated with dignity and respect with no concerns about their safety. Everyone we spoke with expressed their satisfaction with the way the service was managed and the care and support provided by staff.
Care and support plans provided staff with detailed guidance to enable them to support people according to their assessed needs. People’s wishes, choices and preferences about how their care was delivered were outlined and people told us staff respected their wishes.
People’s likelihood of harm was reduced because risks to people’s health, welfare and safety had been assessed and risk assessments produced which guided staff in how to mitigate these risks and keep people safe from harm. However, support plans including risk assessments in relation to the management of people’s medicines were not always sufficiently detailed or accurate.
The provider’s recruitment procedures demonstrated that they operated a safe and effective recruitment system. This meant that people could be assured action had been taken to check that newly appointed staff had the necessary skills and had been assessed as safe to provide their care and support.
There were enough qualified, skilled and experienced staff to meet people’s needs. People received care from a staff team that treated them with kindness and were mindful of protecting their rights to choice, dignity and respect.
Staff were supported with a planned induction and ongoing training opportunities. However, access to regular team meetings was sporadic.
The culture of the service was open, transparent and focused on the needs of people who used the service. Staff were supported by the management team who they described as hands on, supportive and approachable. The provider had systems in place to enable staff to access advice and emergency support out of hours.
People found the management team responded promptly to any concerns. People were provided with opportunities to express their views regarding the quality of the service, through satisfaction surveys and regular visits from coordinators to review of their care.
The provider had quality assurance monitoring process and systems in place to monitor the quality and safety of the care provided.