Archived: Homebased Care (UK) Ltd - Coventry

Updated 18 August 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 14 July 2015 and was announced. We told the provider two working days before the visit we would be coming, so they could ensure they would be in the office to speak with us and arrange for us to speak with care staff. The inspection was conducted by one inspector and an expert-by-experience. An expert-by-experience is a person who has personal experience of using, or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. We looked at the statutory notifications the service had sent us. A statutory notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send to us by law. We also reviewed the information in the provider’s information return (PIR). This is a form we asked the provider to send to us before we visited. The PIR asked the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. They also sent a list of people who used the service so we could contact people to ask them their views of the service.

We spoke by phone to 12 people who used the service, or their relative. During our visit we spoke with two care workers, a care co-ordinator, the registered manager and an audit and compliance manager for the organisation. We also contacted the local authority contracts team and asked for their views; they shared some recent information about the service.

We reviewed three people’s care plans and daily records to see how their care and support was planned and delivered. We checked whether staff had been recruited safely and were trained to deliver the care and support people required. We looked at other records related to people’s care and how the service operated including the service’s quality assurance audits and records of complaints.

Updated 18 August 2015

Homebased Care (UK) Ltd Coventry is a domiciliary care agency which provides personal support to people in their own homes. At the time of our visit the agency supported 39 people.

We visited the offices of Homebased Care Coventry on 14 July 2015. We told the provider we were coming so they could arrange for staff to be available to talk with us about the service.

The service has 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.

People and their relatives told us they felt safe with their care workers. Care workers were trained in safeguarding adults and understood how to protect people from abuse. There were processes to minimise risks to people’s safety; these included procedures to manage identified risks with people’s care and for managing people’s medicines safely. Checks were carried out prior to care workers starting work to ensure their suitability to work with people who used the service.

People told us care workers were kind and respectful and had the right skills to provide the care and support they required. The registered manager understood the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA), and care workers gained people’s consent before providing care. There were enough suitably trained staff to deliver care and support to people. People had different experiences about consistency of care workers. Some people had regular care workers who arrived on time, other people did not know who would be coming and often had to wait over the agreed time for the care worker to arrive.

Care plans and risk assessments contained relevant information to help care workers provide the personalised care people required. People were involved in their care and were asked for their views and opinions about the service they received. Most people knew how to make a complaint if they needed to. People and staff said they could raise concerns with the registered manager, knowing they would be listened to and acted on.

There were processes to monitor the quality of the service provided and understand the experiences of people who used the service. This was through regular communication with people and staff, unannounced checks on care staff working in people’s homes, returned surveys and a programme of checks and audits.