Last updated 11 May 2018
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 comprehensive inspection took place on 16 March 2018 and was announced. We gave the service 24 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because we needed to be sure the registered manager would be available.

Before the inspection, we reviewed information we held about the service, which included notifications they had sent us. A notification is information about important events, which the provider is required to send us by law. We also contacted Local Authority commissioners of adult social care services and Healthwatch and asked them for their views of the service provided.

We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return. This is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.

Inspection site visit activity took place on 16 March 2018. We visited the office location to see the registered manager and office staff and to speak with care staff.

The inspection team consisted of an inspector and two Expert by Experiences. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service. They carried out the telephone interviews with people prior to the office-based inspection. They spoke with 28 people who used the service and 11 relatives.

The inspection was informed by feedback from the telephone interviews as well as questionnaires completed by a number of people using service, relatives, staff and community professionals. We sent 150 questionnaires out and received 39 responses. These responses highlighted people received good quality care from kind and caring staff, although some people felt communication with the office-based staff could be improved.

During the inspection, we spoke with four members of the care staff, quality partner, registered manager, the new manager and regional head of home care.

We looked at records relating to six people who used the service as well as three staff recruitment records. We looked at other information related to the running of and the quality of the service. This included quality assurance audits, training information for care staff, staff duty rotas, meeting minutes and arrangements for managing complaints.

We asked the registered manager to send us a copy of their training matrix and various policies and procedures after the inspection. They did this within the requested timeframe.