Archived: Nightingales Homecare

Updated 6 May 2015

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 is 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.

This inspection took place on the 18th December 2014. The provider was given 48 hours’ notice because the location provides a domiciliary care service and we needed to ensure the registered manager was available. People who used the service and staff were contacted by telephone in January 2015.

The inspection was carried out by one inspector.

To assist with our inspection we asked for information from some local health and social care professionals.

We looked at a sample of records which included three people’s care plans, three staff personnel files, the staff training matrix, and a sample of quality monitoring records.

We talked with four people who used the service, three members of staff, the registered manager and the owner of the service.

Updated 6 May 2015

This inspection was carried out by a visit to the service office on 18th December 2014 and telephone contact with staff and people who used the service in January 2015.

We last inspected Nightingales Homecare in November 2013. At that inspection we found that the service was meeting all the standards we assessed.

Nightingales Homecare provides personal care to people in their own homes. Most people who used the service were funded by the local authority, although there were some people who were privately funded. At the time of our visit there were approximately 170 people using the service and 38 care staff.

Nightingales Homecare is legally required to 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. The current registered manager had been in post for several years.

All the people who used the service who we spoke with were positive about the service. This included the attitude and competence of the staff and the reliability and consistency of the service.

Staff who we spoke with told us they were appropriately trained and that support from the registered manager and other members of the management team was good.

There was a range of systems in place to monitor the quality of the service and people’s satisfaction with it. These helped the service provider to assess and where necessary, to plan improvements.

We identified one area where improvement was required because the service provider was not complying with the relevant regulations. When staff are recruited to work for a domiciliary care agency there are certain checks which the service provider must undertake. These checks are listed in the relevant Regulations. The reason for those checks is to help ensure the service provider has enough information about a prospective employee to make a reasonable decision about their suitability to work with vulnerable people. Although references and DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checks were obtained, other specified checks were not. This meant the service provider was not taking all the steps they needed to, to help ensure people’s safety. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.’

We contacted health and social care professionals to ascertain their views of the service. None expressed any concerns.