Archived: Ribbon Court

Updated 23 June 2016

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 was 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.

We reviewed information received about the service, for example the statutory notifications the service had sent us. A statutory notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send to us by law. We checked whether the Local Authority had any concerns with the service as they sometimes fund people’s personal care.

We carried out an announced inspection visit to the service on 23 and 29 March 2016. We gave short notice to the provider that we were coming so they had time to make arrangements for us to speak with staff and people who used the service. The inspection was conducted by one inspector.

During our visit to Ribbon Court we spoke with five people who used the service in their flats and four care staff plus the registered manager.

We reviewed three people’s care plans to see how their care was planned and delivered. We checked whether staff had been recruited safely and were trained to deliver the care and support people required. We looked at other records related to people’s care and how the service operated including the service’s quality assurance audits, a staff communication book and medicine records.

Updated 23 June 2016

We visited Ribbon Court on 23 and 29 March 2016. We gave short notice to the provider that we were coming so they had time to make arrangements for us to speak with staff and people who used the service.

Ribbon Court is a housing with care service which provides personal care to people in their own homes within the premises of Ribbon Court. At the time of our visit there were 46 people occupying the flats at Ribbon Court and 27 people within those flats were being supported with personal care. Those people supported with personal care received calls from staff at set agreed times. The number of calls and length of time for each call was agreed with people on an individual basis to ensure their needs could be met. There were 19 care staff employed to deliver care and support to people.

The service had a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

Most of the time people felt safe using the service and staff understood how to protect people from abuse. There were processes to minimise risks to people’s safety which included information about individual risks to people in care plans and risk assessments. This information helped staff to provide safe and personalised care. However, some risks were not sufficiently detailed in people’s care records to ensure they could be effectively managed. This included risks related to medicine management and health conditions which impacted on people’s independence.

Recruitment checks were carried out prior to care staff starting work to ensure their suitability to work with people who used the service. Staff told us these were completed before they started work.

The registered manager and staff understood the principles of the Mental Capacity Act (MCA). Staff respected people’s rights to make their own decisions and gained people’s consent before they provided personal care.

People were supported by all members of the care staff team which meant staff knew people and their needs well. There were enough suitably trained staff to deliver care and support to people but sometimes staffing arrangements were not effective. For example, sometimes staff did not arrive to undertake personal care at the times agreed with people to ensure their needs were met. This was due to other duties they were required to complete or sometimes due to emergencies they encountered. However, people felt their needs were met most of the time and staff knew about people’s personal preferences regarding their care to help ensure people were supported how they wished.

Some people were provided with support to prepare meals and drinks on a daily basis to meet their nutritional needs. There was also a restaurant providing a choice of meals each day which people could access independently or with staff support if they wished.

Staff received an induction to the service and training was ongoing to support them in meeting people’s needs effectively. Overall, people were positive about the staff and felt they were supportive in meeting their needs.

People knew they could approach the registered manager if they had any concerns and the registered manager told us she always responded to any concerns promptly. However, the provider’s policy for raising a complaint was not sufficiently clear to assist people in this process.

There were processes to monitor the quality of the service provided and understand the experiences of people who used the service. This included regular communication with people and staff, service satisfaction surveys and some audit checks carried out by the registered manager and provider. The results of the most recent survey people had completed showed an increase in their satisfaction of the service in comparison with the previous survey. This demonstrated the improvements that had been carried out at the service by the registered manager and provider had been recognised by people.

We found that record keeping was not always accurate so there was clear information for staff to support them in their role. Audits did not always identify improvements in progress or made.