Archived: Action for Children Herts Domiciliary Care

Updated 3 April 2019

The inspection:

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.

Inspection team:

The inspection was carried out by one inspector and an inspection manager.

Service and service type:

Action for Children Herts Domiciliary is a domiciliary (home care) care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats. Action for Children Herts Domiciliary provides care and support to children and younger adults.

The service had a manager who was not registered with the Care Quality Commission. The the provider is legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection:

This inspection was announced. We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection site visit because we needed to make sure that the manager would be available.

We visited the office location and spoke with the manager on 15 February 2019. On 19 February 2019 we had a meeting with the manager and the provider`s representative to discuss their plans for developing the service and give feedback on initial findings of the inspection.

What we did:

Before the inspection we reviewed information, we held about the service including statutory notifications. Statutory notifications include information about important events which the provider is required to send us. We received feedback from the local authority and reviewed the commissioner’s report of their most recent inspection.

We requested the provider information return (PIR) to be submitted to us in August 2018. This is information that the provider is required to send to us, which gives us some key information about the service and tells us what the service does well and any improvements they plan to make. However, this information had not been sent to us.

Following the inspection, we spoke with two staff members.

We looked at a care plan for the person who received support and reviewed other records relating to the management of the service like policies and procedures, staff`s training and recruitment records.

Updated 3 April 2019

About the service: Action for Children Herts Domiciliary Care is a domiciliary (home care) care agency. It gives personal care to children and young adults living in their own houses and flats. There was one young adult receiving the regulated activity at the time of the inspection.

People’s experience of using this service:

We could not speak with the person using the service or their parents to ask for feedback on the service they received. This meant that we had to base our judgement on what the manager and staff told us as well as the information we reviewed when we visited the service’s office. Following our visit to the office we had a meeting with the provider and the manager of the service to discuss the provider`s plans to develop the service.

The person who received support in their own home regularly used another respite service owned by the provider. Staff working in the respite service supported the person twice a week with personal care in their own home.

A specific care plan was not developed for the care the person received in their own home. The care plan from the respite service had been used to provide the care. Staff told us they knew how to support the person safely because they were supporting them for a long time.

Risk assessments were developed to assess health risk and risk when using equipment, however these were not specific to the support the person received in their own home.

Staff told us they received training relevant to their roles, however this did not always include training relevant to staff who supported adults.

The provider had no effective governance systems in place for this service as only one person was using this service at the time of inspection. However, they sent us their action plan to evidence how they were planning to develop the service and implement robust governance systems.

Rating at last inspection: Good. (Last report published on 20 May 2016).

Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection based on the rating at the last inspection.

Follow up: We will continue to monitor intelligence we receive about the service to ensure the next inspection is scheduled accordingly.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk