Updated 1 June 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 team consisted of one inspector, an assistant inspector and an expert by experience. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.
Service and service type:
This service provides care to people living in specialist ‘extra care’ housing. Extra care housing is purpose-built or adapted accommodation in a shared site or building. The accommodation is bought or rented and is the occupant’s own home. People’s care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for extra care housing; this inspection looked at people’s personal care service.
People using the service lived in flats, on the purpose built development. There were 47 people receiving personal care at the time of the inspection.
Not everyone using Comfort Call - Stoke receives regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided.
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 48 hours’ notice of the inspection because we needed to gather people’s contact details and gain their permission to contact them as part of the inspection.
Inspection site visit activity started on 26 April 2019 and ended on 30 April 2019. We visited the office location on 29 April 2019 to see the manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures.
What we did:
We used the information we held about the service to formulate our inspection plan. This included statutory notifications that the provider had sent to us. A statutory notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send us by law. We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return (PIR). This is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We also spoke with commissioners of the service to get their feedback about Comfort Call – Stoke.
During the inspection, we spoke with 11 people who used the service and one relative. We also spoke with the registered manager and six care staff.
We reviewed the care records of six people to see whether they were accurate and up to date. These included care plans, daily care records and medicine administration records. We looked at records relating to the management of the service. These included six staff recruitment records, incident records, training information, complaints records and quality assurance records.