Archived: Kate's Home Nursing

Updated 28 November 2023

Kate’s Home Nursing is a registered charity set up to provide hospice at home care for patients in the last stages of illness. They provide end of life care and hospice nursing at home for patients who have expressed a wish to be at home. All palliative nursing care was provided free of charge and paid for from charitable funds. The service received support from some funding from a statutory source but had to raise most of the funds.

The service's team of registered nurses provides specialist palliative care for patients and support for their families.

The service was registered on 24 August 2016 and is registered to provide the following regulated activities:

• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The service has a manager registered with CQC.

The last inspection was on 17 November 2021. It was rated as requires improvement overall.

Updated 28 November 2023

We rated it as requires improvement because:

• The systems of governance, assurance and audit to assess, monitor and improve the quality and safety of the services were not fully clear and did not operate effectively.

However,

• The service had enough staff to care for patients and keep them safe. Staff had training in key skills, understood how to protect patients from abuse, and managed safety well. The service controlled infection risk well. Staff assessed risks to patients, acted on them and kept good care records. The service managed safety incidents well and learned lessons from them.
• Information about staff training, supervision and appraisal was recorded and monitored as was necessary to ensure staff were competent to carry out their duties.
• Staff provided good care and treatment, ensured patients had enough to eat and drink, and gave them pain relief when they needed it. Staff worked well together for the benefit of patients, supported them to make decisions about their care, and had access to good information. Services were available seven days a week.
• Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, took account of their individual needs, and helped them understand their conditions. They provided emotional support to patients, families and carers.
• The service planned care to meet the needs of local people, took account of patients’ individual needs, and made it easy for people to give feedback. People could access the service when they needed it and did not have to wait too long for treatment.
• Staff felt respected, supported and valued. They were focused on the needs of patients receiving care. Staff were clear about their roles and accountabilities. The service engaged well with patients and the community to plan and manage services and all staff were committed to improving services continually.

Updated 8 April 2022

Kate’s Home Nursing provides end of life care and hospice nursing at home for patients in the last stages of illness who have expressed a wish to be at home.

All palliative nursing care was provided free of charge and paid for from charitable funds. The service received support from official sources but had to raise most of the funds.

We inspected the service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out a short notice announced inspection on 17 November 2021.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we review services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

The inspection team included two CQC inspectors and a specialist advisor with expertise in end of life care. The inspection team was overseen by an inspection manager and the Head of Hospital Inspection South West.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it must take some actions to comply with the regulations and that it should make other improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. We also issued the provider with requirement notices. Details are at the end of the report.