Archived: Prospects Home Care Services

Updated 1 November 2017

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 provider was given 48 hours' notice because the location provides a domiciliary care service and we needed to ensure that the registered manager or someone that could help would be present during the inspection.

Before the inspection, we checked for any notifications made to us by the provider, any safeguarding alerts raised about people using the service, and the information we held on our database about the service and provider.

The inspection was carried out by one adult social care inspector. There was one person receiving a service in their home. During the inspection, we spoke with the person’s relative, the staff member who provided care visits, an office staff member, and a company director.

As part of our visit to the office premises we looked at the person’s care plan, risk assessments and care delivery records. We also looked at the personnel file of the staff member and the provider’s policies.

Updated 1 November 2017

Prospects Home Care Services provides a domiciliary care service to people in their own homes. Its services focus mainly on providing live-in care for adults of any age. At the time of our visit, the agency was providing personal care for one person. This was the first inspection of this service at this location.

The service had a registered manager; however they were on leave during the inspection visit. 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.

The relative of the person using the service provided positive feedback. We found the service to ensure people’s privacy and dignity were respected and promoted. The same staff member was consistently supplied to the person, which helped a positive and trusting relationship to develop.

The service supported people to express their views and be actively involved in making decisions about their care. Individualised care plans were set up from this, and the planned support took place.

There were appropriate assessments of any safety risks associated with the care package. There were enough suitable staff for the service.

Staff were provided with sufficient training and support for their care roles. The service has a sufficiently open and empowering culture, and so staff felt supported to provide care to people.

The provider had procedures in place to prevent abuse and take action if abuse was suspected. This included through appropriate staff recruitment checks, to help ensure only safe staff were supplied to visit people.

There were procedures for managing, monitoring and improving the quality of the service. This included systems for listening to and learning from people’s experiences, concerns and complaints.

Whilst the provider had a broad range of detailed homecare policies, they had not been recently reviewed and updated to ensure they reflected current legislation and best practice. The company director undertook to ensure this occurred.

We have made a recommendation about implementing good practice in relation to the Mental Capacity Act 2005.