Archived: Mears Care - Carlisle

Updated 30 November 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 checked 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.

This inspection took place on the 11th September 2015 and was announced. We gave the manager short notice of the inspection as we wanted to ensure they were available on the day of our inspection.

The inspection was carried out by an adult social care inspector.

Before the visit we reviewed the information we held about the service, such as notifications we had received from the registered provider. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to send us by law. We planned the inspection using this information.

We spoke with seven people who used the service. We also spoke with seven staff including the manager, senior carers, and carers.

We looked at five records of written care and other policies and records that related to the service. We looked at two staff files which included supervision, appraisal and induction. We saw a record of training and a training plan. We looked at quality monitoring documents.

Updated 30 November 2015

This inspection took place on the 11th September 2015 and was announced.

Mears Care Carlisle provides care and support for people who live in their own homes. The office is located in Carlisle and it provides services in and around the local area.

The manager of the service was new in post and told us she was in the process of becoming 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.

As part of their recruitment process the service carried out appropriate background checks on new staff.

The service managed medicines appropriately. The service had sufficient appropriately recruited staff available to support people.

All staff received regular supervision and appraisal. There was a clear structure in place to achieve this.

The service demonstrated that they were aware of people’s capacity but did not always document this correctly in people’s written records of care.

People told us that staff were caring and treated them with dignity and respect.

Care plans were written in a straightforward manner and based on thorough assessments. They contained sufficient information to enable people to be supported correctly.

The manager showed that they had systems in place to manage the service in their absence. There was a quality assurance system in place at the service.

We have recommended that people’s level of capacity should be explicit within their written records of care.