Angelus Homecare

Updated 31 December 2022

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 Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection was completed by an 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 and flats.

Registered Manager

This service is required to have a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. 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.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

We gave a short notice period of the inspection so that people could consent to take part in the inspection by giving us feedback by phone.

Inspection activity started on 8 November 2022 and ended on 15 November 2022. We met with the registered manager remotely on 10 November and visited the location’s office on 15 November 2022.

What we did before the inspection

We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. We sought feedback from the local authority. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke to 17 people and relatives via telephone to gain feedback about their care. We spoke to 9 staff including the registered manager, office staff and care staff. We also spoke with 1 health and social care professional.

We reviewed records relating to people’s care and the running of the service. These included care records for four people, three staff recruitment files, audits, policies, incident reports, quality assurance records and medicines administration records.

Updated 31 December 2022

About the service

Angelus Homecare is a home care service providing personal care to people in their own home. The service provides support to older adults who may be living with dementia, a physical disability or mental health diagnosis. At the time of our inspection there were 13 people using the service. The service supported people living in the Hampshire area.

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.

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

The registered manager had made improvements to the quality and safety of the service since our last inspection. There was a clear management structure in place and an effective system to oversee the quality of care. People and staff told us senior staff were professional, approachable and had worked hard to make improvements to the service.

Staff received appropriate training in line with their role. There were systems in place to monitor staff’s ongoing training needs. The provider made assessments of people’s needs prior to care commencing and worked with healthcare professionals to ensure staff had the right training, guidance and equipment in place to provide safe care. There were appropriate processes to gain people’s consent to care. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

There were sufficient numbers of staff in place to meet people’s needs. The registered manager had made responsible decisions in relation to the speed of growth of the service, with the current challenges recruiting new staff. Risks related to the delivery of care were assessed and reduced and people felt safe receiving care from staff. The provider had systems in place to safeguard people from suffering abuse or coming to avoidable harm. There were processes in place to monitor the care people received in real time through the use of electronic care planning systems. This helped to ensure people’s care and medicines records were monitored by senior staff and incidents could be identified and resolved quickly.

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

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 15 June 2021) and there were breaches of regulations. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found enough improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

At the last inspection we found the provider was in breach of regulations. This inspection was carried out to review actions the provider told us they would take to comply with the regulations and improve the service. As a result, we undertook a focussed inspection of the key questions, safe, effective and well-led to review the quality and safety of the service.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good based on the findings of this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Angelus Homecare on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.