Updated 8 May 2019
The inspection:
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked 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.
Inspection team:
The inspection team consisted of one 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;
Start South is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. Everyone using start south received the regulated activity; the Care Quality Commission (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. At the time of our inspection, 43 people were receiving personal care.
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. The registered manager had left the service the previous week. The area manager was currently covering the role. We will refer to this person as the manager within this report.
Notice of inspection:
We gave the service 24 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is a domiciliary care agency service and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care. We needed to be sure that they would be in. Inspection site visit activity started on 9 April 2019 and ended on 15 April 2019. We visited the office location on 9 April 2019 to see the manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures. We also visited people in their own homes. We made calls to people, their relatives and staff on 10 and 15 April 2019.
What we did:
We reviewed information we had received about the service. This included statutory notifications that the provider had sent us. A statutory notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send us by law. We sought feedback from the local authority and other professionals who work with the service. We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return. 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 used all this information to plan our inspection.
During our inspection we spoke with seven members of staff including the manager, seven people using the service, and eight relatives.
We reviewed a range of records. This included two people's care records, four staff files around staff recruitment and supervision and the training records for all staff. We also reviewed records relating to the management of the service and a variety of policies and procedures developed and implemented by the provider.