Updated 29 October 2019
The inspection
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, 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 team consisted of 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. Their area of expertise was with older people.
Service and service type
Nu-Staff Image Plan Limited is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes.
The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.
Notice of inspection
We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit. We needed to be sure that people were informed that we would be contacting them by telephone, and we needed a manager to be available to facilitate this inspection.
Inspection activity started on 24 September 2019 and ended on 3 October 2019. We visited the office location on 24 September 2019 and 1 October 2019.
What we did before the inspection
We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return. This is information providers are required to send us with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. We also spoke with commissioners of the service from the local social services department and clinical commissioning group to obtain their views about the service. We used all of this information to help us plan the inspection.
During the inspection
During the inspection we spoke with four people and eight relatives or friends. We also spoke with the registered manager and four staff.
We reviewed a range of records including five care plans and medicines records, two staff files, staff rotas and training records and other information about the management of the service. This included quality assurance records and audits, medicines records and maintenance of equipment.
After the inspection
We continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence found. This including seeking staff opinions via email and contacting health professionals and commissioners to ask for their view of the service. We received feedback from five staff and two health professionals.
We also looked at training data and quality assurance records and analysed all the information we had gathered.