Archived: Agnes House Flat 2

Updated 9 December 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 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.

We undertook an announced focused inspection of Agnes House on 27 September 2017. This inspection was done to check that improvements had been made to meet legal requirements planned by the provider after our comprehensive inspection on 24 January 2017. We inspected the service against one of the five questions we ask about services: Is the service well-led? This is because the service was not meeting some legal requirements in this area.

The inspection team consisted of one inspector.

We looked at the information we had about this provider. Providers are required to notify the Care Quality Commission [CQC] about specific events and incidents that occur including serious injuries to people receiving care and any safeguarding matters. Appropriate notifications had been sent by the registered provider. We also spoke with service commissioners (who purchase care and support from this service on behalf of people who used this home) to obtain their views. The registered provider produced an action plan after our last inspection. All this information was used to plan what areas we were going to focus on during the inspection.

People that used this respite service were not able to share their experiences with us due to their complex needs. We spoke with the representative of one person that had recently used this service. We also spoke with one support staff and one senior, the deputy manager and the registered manager. We looked at two peoples care records, one person’s medicine records and the systems in place to monitor the quality of the service.

Updated 9 December 2017

We carried out an unannounced comprehensive inspection at this service on 24 January 2017. We found the service was in breach of one of the regulations. This related to the governance arrangements and the lack of robust quality monitoring systems in place to monitor the quality of the service provided to people. After the inspection, the provider wrote to us telling us what action they would take to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breach.

We undertook this focused inspection on 27 September 2017 to check that the provider had followed their action plan and to confirm that they were now meeting the legal requirements. The provider was given half an hour’s notice of our arrival to ensure someone was available at the service to enable us to complete this inspection.

This report only covers our findings in relation to those requirements. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Agnes House Flat 2 on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Agnes House Flat 2 is registered to provide accommodation with personal care to one person with support needs that include learning disability, and autism. The service provides a ‘respite service’ to people. Respite means that people are supported in a care environment rather than by family or friends for short periods of time. People use the service for varied amounts of time. Some people use it a few times a year; others on a regular basis. When people are not using the respite service they live at home in the community with their families or carers. The service is provided in a ground floor flat which has one bedroom. The provider has other small residential care homes that were located near to this service and the staff worked in all of these services. At the time of our inspection no-one was using the service.

There was a registered manager in post. 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.

We found the provider had taken action and the legal requirements had been met. We found improvements were still on-going in some areas.

The provider had made sufficient improvements to monitor the quality of the service provided. This included completing audits at the service before and after people had used it for respite. These audits included a review of the environment to ensure it was fit for purpose and safe for someone to use. It also included an audit of the medicines administered to people while they used the service. We found improvements had been made and care records had been reviewed and updated to ensure they accurately reflected people’s needs and provided staff with the information they needed to meet people’s needs. We found improvements were still needed in relation to the environment and to ensure all care records were audited following people using the service. We received an action plan following our visit telling us these outstanding areas had been addressed.