Background to this inspection
Updated
28 April 2021
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 Care Act 2014.
Inspection team
The inspection was carried out by one inspector.
Service and service type
This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes.
The service had a registered manager. This means that they are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.
Notice of inspection
Our inspection was announced. We gave the service notice of the inspection. This was because it is a domiciliary care service and we needed to be sure that the registered manager would be in the office to support us with the inspection.
What we did before the inspection
The provider was not asked to complete a provider information return prior to this inspection. This is information we require providers to send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.
We reviewed the information we already held about this service. This included details of its registration, previous inspection reports and any notifications of significant incidents the provider had sent us. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.
During the inspection
We spoke with the registered manager. We reviewed care plans, which included risk assessments and staff files, which included pre-employment checks.
After the inspection
We continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence we found such as staff timesheets and policies. We also spoke to one care staff and a relative of a person that used the service. We also contacted professionals that worked with the service for feedback.
Updated
28 April 2021
About the service
This service is a domiciliary care agency and is based in the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham. The service provides personal care to adults in their own homes. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. The Care Quality Commission (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
People had received their medicines as prescribed. Staff had received a competency assessment following their medicines training and a medicine support plan was in place, which included information on how to support people with medicines.
Quality assurance systems were in place to identify shortfalls and take prompt action to ensure people always received safe care, which included audits of medicines. Spot checks had been carried out to check if staff followed care standards. The outcomes of spot checks were communicated to staff.
Risk assessments had been carried out to ensure people received safe care. Pre-employment checks such as references had been sought to ensure staff were suitable to support people. Systems were in place to monitor staff time-keeping and prevent infections.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection and update
The previous rating for this service was requires improvement (published 17 January 2018) and there were breaches of regulation. CQC had issued requirement notices for Regulation 12 (safe care and treatment) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.
Why we inspected
We undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led to check if the service was compliant with the requirement notices issued at the last comprehensive inspection and to see if improvements had been made.
No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.
The overall rating for the service has changed from Requires Improvement to Good. This is based on the findings at this inspection.
You can read the report from our last inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Barmat Healthcare Limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.