Updated 1 June 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: One Inspector, one assistant inspector, and one expert by experience carried out this inspection. An expert-by-experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.
Service and service type: This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. Not everyone using The Great Hospital Domiciliary Service receives regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided.
The 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. 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. At the time of our inspection, a manager was registered with us.
Notice of inspection: We gave the service 72 working hours’ notice of the inspection site visit because we needed to arrange to speak to people using the service and ensure we could access the service’s office. Inspection site visit activity started on 14 May and ended on 15 May. We visited the office location on 14 May 2019 to see the manager and office staff; and to review care records, policies and procedures.
What we did: We reviewed information we had received about the service since they were registered. This included details about incidents the provider must notify us about, such as abuse. We sought feedback from the local authority. We assessed the 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. We used all this information to plan our inspection.
During the inspection we spoke with 10 people and four relatives to ask about their experience of the care provided. We spoke with five members of care staff. This included; three care assistants, one senior care assistant, one care coordinator, and the registered manager.
We reviewed a range of records. This included five people's care records, including their medicine records. We also looked at two staff files which included training and supervision records. We looked at records relating to compliment and complaints and records relating to the management of the service.