Nationwide Care Services Ltd (Worcester)

Updated 23 May 2023

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. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by 1 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. The Expert by Experience carried out telephone calls to people prior to the inspection.

Service and service type

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations.

At the time of our inspection there was not a registered manager in post. The current manager had submitted an application to register. We are currently assessing this application.

Notice of inspection

This inspection was announced.

We gave the service notice of the inspection. This was because we needed to be sure that the provider or manager would be in the office to support the inspection.

Inspection activity started on 27 March 2023 and ended on 18 April 2023. We visited the location’s office on 5 April 2023.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. We sought feedback from the local authority who work with the service. We also requested feedback from Healthwatch to obtain their views of the service. Healthwatch is an independent consumer champion that gathers and represents the views of the public about health and social care services in England.

We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. We used information gathered as part of monitoring activity that took place on 22 July 2022 to help plan the inspection and inform our judgements. We took this into account when we inspected the service and made the judgements in this report. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with 9 people who used the service and with 3 family members about their experience of the care provided. We spoke with 8 members of staff including the manager, office staff, care workers and the nominated individual. The nominated individual is responsible for supervising the management of the service on behalf of the provider.

We reviewed a range of records. This included 4 people's care records and multiple medication records. We looked at 4 staff files in relation to recruitment. A variety of records relating to the management of the service, including policies and procedures were reviewed.

Updated 23 May 2023

About the service

Nationwide Care Services LTD (Worcester) is a domiciliary care service providing personal care to people living in the community. The service provides support to younger adults and older people. At the time of our inspection there were 65 people using the service.

Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

Systems and processes were in place to safeguard people from abuse. Staff understood what steps to take to protect people. People told us they felt safe and spoke positively about the staff team. People’s needs and risk were assessed. Care plans and risk assessments guided staff on how to care and support people safely. For people who required support with their medicines this was done safely. Staff continued to be recruited safely; pre-employment checks were carried out to ensure suitable staff were employed.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

The current manager had applied to register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and their application is being assessed. The manager regularly met with staff and people using the service to obtain their views and feedback on service delivery. There were effective systems in place such as audits and checks to monitor the quality and safety of the service and drive through improvements.

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. We considered this guidance as there were people using the service who have a learning disability and or who are autistic.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published 3 March 2020).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

The overall rating for the service has remained good based on the findings of this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Nationwide Care Services Ltd (Worcester) on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.