Updated 31 May 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 an inspector and an expert by experience. An expert by experience (EXE) is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service. Their area of expertise was care of older people. They made telephone calls to people and their relatives.
Service and service type:
Audley Care Ltd - Audley Care Chalfont Dene is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats. Some people live within the Audley Care retirement village and have access to the care team 24-Hours a day for emergencies. For instance, if they have fallen and require support. It provides a service to mainly older and younger adults with a range of physical and mental health conditions. The service is not registered to provide support to children.
The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.
Notice of inspection:
We gave the service 5 days’ notice of the inspection site visit because we needed to be sure that the registered manager would be available to support the inspection.
Inspection site visit activity started on 7 May 2019 and ended on 14 May 2019. We visited the office location on 7 and 10 May 2019 to see the manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures. On the 14 May 2019 we reviewed evidence sent to us from the service. The EXE made telephone calls to people and their relatives on the 10 May 2019.
What we did:
Prior to the inspection we requested and received a Provider Information Return (PIR). Providers are required to send us key information about their service, what they do well and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. Throughout the inspection we gave the provider and registered manager opportunities to tell us what improvements they had planned.
We reviewed notifications and any other information we had received since the last inspection. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to send us by law.
When at the office we spoke with the registered manager, regional operational manager, two office staff and one senior carer. During the course of the inspection we visited three people and their relatives who lived in the retirement village. We spoke with six people and six relatives on the telephone. We reviewed three people’s care records in detail and a further two to look at medicine management. We looked at four staff recruitment and training records. We read incident and accident records. We reviewed records held by the service about calls visits and monitoring of the quality of the service. Following the site visit we sent emails to 13 staff and three relatives to seek further feedback.