Archived: Mears Care - Bristol ECHS

The service provides personal care to people living in an extra care housing scheme. People live in their own flats within the complex and staff are based on site to deliver their commissioned care packages. The service also provides personal care to people in their own homes within a small radius of the office. Throughout the report we refer to the extra care housing scheme as ECHS and those people receiving care in their homes outside of the complex are described as receiving ‘domiciliary care’. This is how staff distinguished between the two aspects of the service.

There was a registered manager in place. 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 found the service to be very well led. The registered manager had embedded a strong person centred ethos throughout the service. This was reflected in the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) accreditation that the registered manager had been part of achieving. We found clear examples of how this approach to care had impacted on people. For one person, the registered manager had supported them to make contact with family that lived abroad and this had resulted in family flying over to attend the person’s birthday.

Staff and other professionals spoke very highly of the registered manager and gave positive feedback about their approach to caring for people. The registered manager told us they were passionate about providing social and community engagement opportunities for people they supported and this was evident throughout our inspection. The registered manager was innovative and proactive in their approach to finding ways to enhance people’s lives through social activities. This was achieved through applying for and being awarded funding; this included a grant from the National Lottery to provide community activities for people. The impact of these opportunities was clear for people as they told us about the difference this had made to their lives.

The service often went above and beyond their contractual obligations to ensure people had a good quality of care. This was evident in feedback we received and the feedback we viewed from the service’s own quality monitoring measures. Comments included, “We would like to say a special thank you to X (staff) and X (staff) who were with him at the end. The way they handled their job was above and beyond and earned the love and respect of our whole family”. Another comment was “Thank you so much for all the love and care you have given to mum and as a family. You really have gone above and beyond”.

People receiving support from the service were safe. There were sufficient numbers of staff to meet their needs and ensure their calls happened at the right times. There were processes in place to ensure people received their medicines as prescribed.

Staff had good links with healthcare professionals to ensure people’s health needs were met. People had clear information in their support plans about their dietary needs.

Staff received good training and support and their performance was monitored. This included senior staff undertaking ‘spot check’ of care staff carrying out care, to ensure this was done safely and in a person centred way.

People told us that they had been involved in developing their care plans and that they consented to the care and support provided. There were suitable arrangements to manage medication to keep people safe. Two people told us that they could manage their own medication.

The staff had had recruitment checks before they were employed to make sure that they were suitable to work with people. They also had provided information about their qualifications and experience to show that they had the skills to work with people. Staff received more training to keep their qualifications and skills up-to-date.

There were arrangements to monitor the quality of the service provided and people were asked their views about service. There are also arrangements to make sure that people were kept safe.

We did receive comments from two people that they felt staff were very rushed and we fed this back to the manager. The manager told us that she would discuss this with staff. One person expressed concern about the way in which the service had developed since it opened in terms of the level of people's needs; they felt that because people's needs had increased, this had implications for how busy staff were. One person that we spoke with told us that generally staff had the skills to do their job but on occasion a member of staff had been sent that wasn't able to meet their relative's particular need.

People told us that they felt safe with staff and would be able to raise any concerns or issues if they had them. We saw that there were policies and procedures in place to manage complaints.