Background to this inspection
Updated
30 March 2015
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
The inspection took place on 19 February 2015 and was announced.
The provider was given 48 hours’ notice because the agency provides care to people in their own homes. The notice period gave the manager time to arrange for us to speak with people who used the service and staff who worked for the agency, and ensured they would be in the office to speak with us.
The provider sent us a list of people who used the service. We sent questionnaires to 29 people who used the service and lived in the Coventry area, and received 13 responses back. We did not send questionnaires to people who lived in Solihull as the provider had only recently started to provide a service in that area. We spoke by phone to ten people or their relatives from Coventry and Solihull. We also spoke with six care staff.
We reviewed information received about the service, for example, from notifications the provider sent to inform us of events which affected the service. We also contacted the local authority commissioning units to find out their views of the service provided. Their views were consistent with what we found at the inspection.
We visited the agency’s office and spoke with the provider who was the only person in the office that day. We looked at the records of three people who used the service and looked at a sample of three staff records. We also reviewed records which demonstrated the provider monitored the quality of service (quality assurance audits).
Updated
30 March 2015
This inspection took place on 19 February 2015. The provider was given two days’ notice of our inspection. This was to arrange for staff and people to be available to talk with us about the service.
New Hope Care is a domiciliary agency which provides personal support to people in their own homes. The agency provides support to people in the Solihull and Coventry areas of the West Midlands.
The registered manager identified in this report is no longer the manager of the service. 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. The registered manager had left the service in November 2014 and the provider was acting as the manager until a new manager was recruited.
At our last inspection in April 2014 we identified concerns in record keeping at the agency. At this inspection we found record keeping had improved, although there were some records which needed updating.
People and their relatives told us they mostly felt safe using the service and staff treated them well. However, they felt less safe when their regular care staff were absent because they were not sure if the substitute staff member would cover the call on time and sometimes the call was not covered at all.
Care workers had left the agency and the provider found it challenging to recruit and retain staff to meet people’s needs. They were recruiting new staff and looking at improving the retention rates of staff at the service.
Care workers understood how to protect people they supported from abuse. People and their relatives thought staff were kind and responsive to people’s needs.
Care workers received training considered essential to provide health and social care safely and to meet the needs of people they cared for. Management and staff understood the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA), and supported people in line with these principles.
People told us they knew how to make a complaint if they needed to. However some people had not been satisfied with the responses to their concerns.
Since our last visit, the agency had been through a period of management instability. Two registered managers and other key staff had left the organisation. The provider who owned other New Hope domiciliary care agencies had recently re-located to this agency to provide additional management support and improve the service provided to people.