Archived: Willow Domiciliary Care

Updated 18 December 2020

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. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by 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

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses.

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 a short period notice of the inspection because some of the people using it could not consent to a home visit from an inspector. This meant that we had to arrange for a ‘best interests’ decision about this.

Inspection activity started on 25/11/2020 and ended on 4/12/2020. We visited the office location on 3/12/2020.

What we did before inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since it was registered with CQC.

Before the inspection we requested the registered manager provide us with numerous documents for us to review. This included care and medication records for four people, four staff personnel records, policies and procedures, governance records and investigation records. We spoke with four people and five relatives.

During the inspection

We spoke with registered manager and a senior member of staff. We reviewed further records associated with the ongoing quality monitoring of the service, risk management and staffing.

After the inspection

We requested feedback from five staff members and one health care professional. We received feedback from four staff members.

Updated 18 December 2020

About the service

Willow Domiciliary Care is an agency providing support to people in their own homes. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided. At the time of our inspection the service was providing personal care support to 12 people.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

Everyone we spoke with gave positive feedback about the service and said they would recommend it to others.

People's needs were met in a truly individual and personalised way by staff who were kind, caring and responsive to their changing needs. People felt listened to and knew how to raise concerns. Enough staff, who had been recruited safely, were available to meet people’s needs. People could be confident they were supported by staff who had access to appropriate guidance and understood how to keep them safe. Staff’s knowledge of the people they supported was good and they were able to tell us about the risks associated with their care and how to minimise these.

People’s medicines were managed safely, and people were protected from the risk of infection because staff used protective equipment. Incidents were used to identify improvements that could be made to people’s care and support.

People knew how to raise concerns. They had confidence in the registered manager and told us they would recommend the service to others. A quality assurance system was in place to assess, monitor and improve the service. Incidents and accidents were monitored by the registered manager.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

This service was registered with us on 12/09/2018 and this was the first inspection.

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to the management of risks for people and the management of this service. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of Safe and Well led only.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. As this is the first inspection and we did not look at all of the key questions an overall rating has not been given. We will look to provide an overall rating at our next inspection.

We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from this concern. Please see the Safe and Well led sections of this report.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.