About the serviceCarelink Healthcare Professionals Ltd is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. It provides a service to older adults. At the time of the inspection 102 people were using the service.
People’s experience of using this service
•People were pleased with the quality of care and support they experienced. They told us they felt safe when support workers visited them to provide care. A person told us, “It’s so good to know I can just trust them.”
•Support workers made people feel safe and secure.
•Support workers knew who to report any concerns to and assessments of potential risk ensured that people were as safe as possible. They told us they were confident that if they raised any concerns the registered manager and senior staff would take them seriously.
•Support workers were trained in how to support people safely, for example when they used equipment such a hoist to lift and transfer people. They told us they knew what it felt like to be hoisted because they experienced this for themselves when they were trained how to use hoists.
•The same support workers supported people most of the time. The provider recognised this was important to people and was working towards ensuring this. They organised support workers into small teams so that people had a core team of five support workers who would visit them. The provider employed enough support workers so that they could meet people’s needs in a timely way.
•Support workers went through a thorough recruitment process that ensured as far as possible that only suitable staff were employed. New support workers learnt about people’s needs by ‘shadowing’ then working alongside experienced colleagues before supporting people alone. They learnt about people’s likes, dislikes and preferences about how they wanted to be supported.
•Support workers had training that supported them to have the knowledge and skills to do their job well and effectively meet people’s needs.
•Support workers gave people their prescribed medicines safely. They had training about how to manage medicines safely.
•Support workers followed safe practice for infection control. They wore protective equipment such as gloves and aprons when they supported people. They supported people to keep their homes clean.
•Support workers supported those people who required support to have enough to eat and drink and to access health services when they needed. They telephoned for doctors or nurses to attend to a person if they were unwell.
•Support workers respected people’s privacy and dignity and encouraged people to be as independent as possible. People had opportunities to decide on the care they wanted and to review and change the care if it was not meeting their needs. Care records reflected their decisions.
•People knew how to complain and were confident that the registered manager or office staff would resolve their complaints. People told us they found it easy to contact the office.
•The provider had effective arrangements for monitoring the quality of the care and support people experienced. These included regularly asking people for their feedback and acting on what people said.
Rating at last inspection
At the last inspection we rated this service Good (report published on 5 July 2016).
Why we inspected
This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor intelligence we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If any concerning information is received we may inspect sooner.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk