21 February 2017
During a routine inspection
This was our first inspection of the service since it was registered by us on 7 July 2015.
The service was operated by a company that was the registered provider. It was owned by two directors one of whom was also the 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. In this report when we speak about both the company and the registered manager we refer to them as being, ‘the registered persons’.
We found that there was one breach of regulation 19 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. This was because the registered persons did not have a robust recruitment procedure. This had reduced their ability to ensure that only suitable people were employed to work in the service.
Staff knew how to keep people safe from situations in which they might experience abuse and people had been supported to avoid preventable accidents. Medicines were managed safely and people had been helped to obtain all of the healthcare they needed. There were enough staff and visits were completed in the right way.
Staff knew how to care for people in the right way including supporting people to eat and drink enough. However, staff had not received all of the training and support which the registered persons said they needed.
CQC is required by law to monitor how registered persons apply the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) and to report on what we find. The registered manager and staff had received training in this subject and this enabled them to help people make decisions for themselves. When people lacked the capacity to make their own decisions the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and codes of practice were followed. This helped to protect people’s rights by ensuring decisions were made that were in their best interests.
People were treated with kindness and compassion. Staff recognised people’s right to privacy and promoted their dignity. Confidential information was kept private.
People had been consulted about the care they wanted and they had been given all of the assistance they needed including people who lived with dementia. Staff recognised the importance of promoting equality and diversity by supporting people to make choices about their lives. There were arrangements to quickly and fairly resolve complaints.
Some quality checks had not been robustly completed and good team working was not fully promoted. However, people had been consulted about how best to develop the service. Staff were supported to speak out if they had any concerns and people had benefited from staff acting upon good practice guidance.