Updated 24 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 one inspector.
Service and service type:
This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. It provides a service to children from four years old, younger adults and older people.
The service did not have a registered manager in post. A registered manager is someone who, alongside the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided. The services manager was in the process of applying to be registered with the CQC.
Notice of inspection:
We gave the service five days’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small and the manager and provider were spending most of their time providing care. We needed to be sure that there would be someone in, as well as ensuring that our inspection did not impact on people receiving their care and support.
What we did:
Prior to the inspection we reviewed any notifications we had received from the service. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to tell us about by law.
We asked, but the provider did not complete the required Provider Information Return. This is information providers must send us to give us key information about the service, what it does well and improvements they plan to make. We took this into account in making our judgements in this report.
Inspection site visit activity started on 5 February 2019 and ended on 19 March 2019. During this time we spent two days at the location’s office and contacted people using the service and staff to hear their views. We looked at records relating to three people’s care, incident reports, policies and procedures, recruitment procedures, training records. We also looked at audits and systems in place to check on the quality of service provided.
We spoke with the Operations Director (which we have referred to as the provider), service manager and four staff; senior support worker and support workers. We also spoke with three people using the service, four people’s relatives and a social care professional.