Essential Futures Limited

Updated 12 April 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 was carried out by two adult social care inspectors.

Service and service type: Essential Futures is domiciliary care agency.

The service does not have a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. A registered manager is 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 24 hours' notice of the inspection visit in line with our methodology for inspecting this type of service. Inspection site visit activity started on 18 March 2019 and ended on 19 March 2019. We visited the office location on 19 March 2019 to meet with the management team and care staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures. One inspector conducted telephone interviews with four people who were receiving personal care from the service and spoke with ten people’s relatives.

What we did: Before the inspection we reviewed information held about the service including any notifications we had received. A notification must be sent to the Care Quality Commission every time a significant incident has taken place. We had received concerns about the service shared with us from the local authority, following a quality monitoring visit they undertook during January 2019. Concerns were in respect of recording of medication, provision of supervision, support plans, personalisation and mental capacity assessments.

During the inspection we spoke with eight care staff, three team managers, the acting area manager, the central quality manager and the nominated individual.

We reviewed a range of records. This included five care and medicine records. We also looked at five staff files around staff recruitment, various records relating to training and supervision of staff, records relating to the management of the service and a variety of systems of audit developed and implemented by the provider.

Updated 12 April 2019

About the service: Essential Futures is a domiciliary care agency which provides supported living and personal care to people living in their own homes in Warwickshire. Some people had 24- hour care, and other people received care calls at agreed times when support was required. At the time of the inspection the service provided different levels of support to 74 people; based upon their needs. Of these, 29 people were receiving the regulated service of personal care.

People’s experience of using this service:

¿ People were happy with the care and support they received from the service. They, and relatives, felt involved in how their care was planned and delivered, and overall, described positive relationships with staff who undertook their care calls.

¿ People had care plans which reflected people's needs and preferences. Staff knew people well and how to protect them from risks of injury.

¿ Risks had been assessed, and overall, management plans contained the detail to inform staff, should they need to refer to the information, of how to reduce risks of potential injury or harm.

¿ Staff were supported through an induction, training and meetings.

¿ The provider had implemented systems and processes to audit the quality of the service. Improvements were being implemented and needed to be embedded and sustained by the provider.

¿ The service met the characteristics of 'Good' in four of the five key questions. Overall, the service was well managed, however, we found some improvements were required in the key question related to Well Led. Our overall rating for the service is 'Good'. More information is in the full report.

Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection based on the rating at the last inspection.

Follow up: We will continue to monitor the service and plan to inspect it in line with our re-inspection programme. If we receive any information of concern we may bring our inspection forward.