About the service: Gemini Exclusive Care Ltd is a domiciliary care agency who are registered to offer support to adults with; Dementia, Learning disabilities or autistic spectrum disorder, Older People, Physical Disability and Sensory Impairments. They provide personal care to people living in their own homes. Not everyone using Gemini Exclusive Care Ltd received personal care. At the time of our inspection, nine people were receiving personal care.
People’s experience of using this service:
People and relatives used phases such as, “Friendly”, “caring”, “polite” and “lovely” when describing staff.
People told us staff were reliable and on time and built good relationships with them.
Staff had a good knowledge and understanding of the people using the service and people received care based on their individual assessed needs.
People were treated respectfully and were involved in every decision possible. All care plans had been signed by the person or their representative.
People were listened to and supported to express their views and opinions. A member of staff told us, “We always make sure we give people choices, treat as individuals, and respect different traditions and choices.”
The registered manager gained regular feedback from people, relatives and staff via a feedback questionnaire.
The provider ensured safe recruitment processes were completed and all staff completed an induction which included training and shadow shifts, to ensure they had the knowledge and skills to carry out their roles and responsibilities. However not all staff we spoke to fully understood the Mental Capacity Act (MCA), and did not always know if a person lacked capacity. The registered manager agreed to retrain staff on the MCA as required.
Staff and people told us, that staff always ensured people were involved in decisions about their care and staff understood what they needed to do to make sure decisions were taken in people's best interests.
When people needed referring to other health care professionals such as GP's, occupational therapists or district nurses, staff understood their responsibility to ensure they passed the information onto relatives so that this was organised, or they assisted the person to call themselves.
The provider had safeguarding and whistleblowing systems and policies in place
The registered manager had quality assurance systems in place. Audits were in place which enabled the management team to monitor the service and drive improvements as required. Where improvements were identified actions were put in place to address any issues.
The service met the characteristics for a rating of ‘Good’ in all five key questions we inspected. Therefore, our overall rating for the service after this inspection was ‘Good’; More information is in the full report.
Rating at last inspection:
At the last inspection the service was rated Good. (Report published 27 September 2016).
Why we inspected:
This inspection was a planned inspection
Follow up:
We will continue to monitor this service and plan to inspect in line with our reinspection schedule for services rated Good.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk