Archived: Carewatch (Rugby)

Updated 4 July 2017

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 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 Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

We inspected the service on 11 May 2017 as an announced inspection, we gave the provider two days’ notice of our inspection visit; so that we could be sure the manager and staff were available to speak with us. This inspection was undertaken by two inspectors.

Before our inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service. We looked at information received from the local authority commissioners and the statutory notifications the manager had sent us. A statutory notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send to us by law. Commissioners are people who contract service, and monitor the care and support the service provides, when services are paid for by the local authority.

We spoke with seven people who used the service and five people’s relatives across the two areas.

We wrote to seven members of care staff to ask for their views, we also spoke with three members of care staff, Quality Service Improvement Manager, the registered manager and the Regional Operations Director. We received written feedback from three care staff.

We looked at a range of records about people’s care including four care files, daily records and charts, medicines records and staff call rotas. This was to assess whether people’s care delivery matched their records. We reviewed records of the checks the manager and the provider made to assure themselves people received a quality service.

We looked at staff files to check staff were receiving supervision and appraisals to continue their professional development.

Updated 4 July 2017

We inspected Carewatch (Rugby) on 11 May 2017 as an announced inspection. Carewatch (Rugby) is registered to provide personal care to people in their own homes across the Rugby and Northampton area. At the time of our inspection visit the service was supplying care and support to one hundred people in their own homes. Four of those one hundred people lived in shared accommodation and were supported by care staff over a 24 hour a day period.

This was the first inspection that had taken place at the service. This was because the service had only recently been registered with us in March 2017, It had however previously been registered under a different owner/provider. The previous provider operated as a franchise business under the ‘Carewatch’ brand. Carewatch are a large organisation that operates services across the country which are run under their own company, or as franchise services. After the franchise service went into liquidation, the service had been taken over by the Carewatch company in early December 2016.

A requirement of the service’s registration is that they have a 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. At the time of our inspection visit there was a registered manager working at the service.

We found the governance of the service was not always effective. Systems to monitor the quality of care to people were not consistently effective as people’s care records required updating to ensure they always reflected people’s individual support needs. In addition the provider was not following the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) to assess people’s capacity to make decisions where this was required. Risks to people’s individual health and wellbeing were not always identified and care was not always planned and delivered to minimise risks to people. Medicines procedures required improvement to ensure people always received their prescribed medicines safely.

Staff understood their responsibilities to protect people from the risk of abuse. The manager made sure there were enough staff to support people safely. The provider checked staff were suitable to support people before they began working at the service and in people’s homes.

People were supported by a consistent staff team to meet their needs. Staff completed an induction to ensure they understood their role and responsibilities. There was a training programme in place to refresh staff knowledge and ensure they continued to work in accordance with best practice, however, this was being developed further at the time of our inspection visit.

Staff knew people well and respected their privacy and dignity. People were supported maintain their nutrition which met their preferences and were referred to healthcare services when their health needs changed.

People knew how to make complaints and provide feedback about the quality of the service. Complaints procedures were in place to ensure complaints were investigated and responded to in a timely way. The provider monitored feedback from complaints to identify trends and patterns, and continuously improve.

We found breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.