Updated 11 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 adult social care inspector.
Service and service type:
Helping Hands Stourbridge is a domiciliary care service. Staff deliver personal care support to people living in their own homes. At the time of inspection, the service provided personal care to 37 people living in their own homes. People using the service are older people, some with dementia or a physical disability.
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 four days’ notice of the inspection visit, this included a weekend. We gave this notice because it is a small domiciliary care service and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff and meeting people who use the service. We needed to be sure that they would be available to speak with us. We also needed to ensure that people’s consent was gained for us to contact them for feedback about the service. Inspection site visit activity took place on 21 May 2019. We visited the office location and spoke the registered manager and reviewed care records and policies and procedures.
What we did:
We reviewed the records held about the service. This included notifications received from the provider. Notifications are specific events that the provider are required to tell us about by law. We did not ask the registered manager to submit a Provider Information Return (PIR) as part of this inspection. Instead we looked at the providers service improvement plan. This told us what the service had achieved and what they intend to develop in the future. We require the provider to submit PIR information annually and it provides us with information to plan our inspection.
During this inspection we spoke with the registered manager, two care staff, one staff trainer, three people using the service and two relatives of people using the service. We looked at four people’s care records to see how their care was planned and delivered. Other records we looked at included four staff recruitment files, staff supervision activity, staff training records, accident and incident records, safeguarding, complaints and compliments and the provider’s audits and overview information about the service. On 29 and 31 May 2019 we telephoned and spoke to three people that use the service and two relatives of people using the service, to ask for their experience of the care provided.