Last updated 3 August 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.

This inspection took place on 11 May 2017 and was unannounced. The inspection team consisted of two inspectors.

Before the inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service. This included a Provider Information Return (PIR), which was submitted by the provider prior to the inspection. The PIR is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We also reviewed notifications of incidents that the provider had sent us and previous inspection reports. A notification is information about important events, which the service is required to send us by law.

To help us gain an understanding of people’s experiences of using the service we observed the interactions between people and staff and saw care and support being provided. We looked at three care plans and associated care documentation and at records relating to how medicines were managed. We also looked at documentation relating to the management of the service including policies and procedures, staffing rotas covering the last six weeks, staff training records, a range of audits and the results of quality assurance surveys.

We spoke with four people living in the service, three relatives, four members of staff and two visiting health professionals. We also spent time discussing the service with members of the management team including the registered manager, the care managers and the office manager. We also looked at five staff files to see whether staff had been recruited safely and looked at complaints and compliments received by the service.

Some people living at Boars Tye Farm could not easily give us their views and opinions about their care. To help us gain a better understanding of people's experiences of living in the service we used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a specific way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk to us.