Archived: Age UK North Tyneside

Updated 8 January 2016

We undertook an announced focused inspection of Age UK North Tyneside on 30 September 2015. This inspection was undertaken to check that improvements to meet legal requirements planned by the provider after our comprehensive inspection in June 2015 had been made. We inspected the service against two of the five questions we ask about services: Is the service safe? and Is the service well-led? This is because the service was not meeting one legal requirement in relation to the management of medicines at the previous inspection in June 2015.

The inspection team consisted of a pharmacy inspector and an inspector.

We spoke with the registered manager and four care workers. We visited 10 people at their homes and looked at their care plans, risk assessments and medicines administration records. We also looked at medicines audits and other information which the provider sent us which related to the management of the service.

Prior to carrying out the inspection, we reviewed all the information we held about the service.

Updated 8 January 2016

We carried out a comprehensive inspection of this service in June 2015. A breach of legal requirements was found in relations to medicines management. We issued a warning notice and told the provider they needed to improve. We undertook this focused inspection to confirm that they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to those requirements. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Age UK North Tyneside on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Age UK North Tyneside provides personal care to people living in their own homes. There were over 400 people using the service at the time of the inspection.

At this inspection we found that improvements had been made with medicines management. Medicines were recorded and administered safely. We could not improve the rating for safe from requires improvement because to do so needs consistent good practice over time. We changed the rating awarded for well-led, since we had previously rated this domain as requires improvement because of the enforcement action we took. We judged that the provider had met the requirements of the warning notice; therefore we rated well-led as good because we found there was an effective system in place to monitor and assess the quality and safety of the service.

There was a registered manager in place. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) 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 and associated Regulations about how the service is run. She spoke passionately about her role and dedication to ensuring the care and welfare of people who used the service. A well-defined management structure was in place from the board down to the delivery teams.

The provider was displaying their CQC ratings in their head office and on their website in line with legal requirements. They were also meeting all the conditions of their registration including the submission of notifications. Notifications are changes, events or incidents that the provider is legally obliged to send us within the required timescale. They enable us to monitor any trends or concerns within the service.