Updated 29 March 2019
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. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
Inspection team:
The inspection team consisted of two inspectors.
Service and service type:
Ask Butler (UK) Limited is a domiciliary care agency which provides personal care to people living in their own homes. At the time of the inspection the agency was providing care to 15 people. The service specialises in providing personal care for people receiving palliative care or end of life care in their own homes.
The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission who was also the provider. This means that they are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.
Notice of inspection:
We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small and the registered manager is often out of the office supporting staff or visiting people who use the service. We needed to be sure that they would be in.
What we did:
Before inspection: We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return. (PIR) This is information we ask providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.
We looked at information we held about the service including notifications they had made to us about notifiable events. We also reviewed all other information sent to us from other stakeholders for example the local authority and members of the public.
During the inspection:
¿ We spoke to the registered manager, the office manager and four care workers.
¿ We reviewed four people’s care records.
¿ We checked the policies and procedures.
¿ We looked at records relating to the management of the service, recruitment, and training records of four care workers.
After the inspection: We spoke to a range of professionals who worked in partnership with the service to plan, arrange and commission care for people who need palliative or end of life care. Due to the frailty of the people receiving care we spoke to three relatives of people using the service to understand their experience of the care provided.