Background to this inspection
Updated
11 May 2017
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.
The inspection included a visit to the agency office on 25 April 2017. To make sure key staff were available to assist in the inspection the registered provider was given notice of the visit, in line with our current methodology for inspecting domiciliary care agencies. An adult social care inspector conducted the inspection.
To help us to plan and identify areas to focus on in the inspection we considered all the information we held about the service. Before the inspection, the registered provider had completed a Provider Information Return (PIR). This is a form that asks the registered provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well, and improvements they plan to make. We looked at any notifications sent to us. Notifications are changes, events or incidents the registered provider is legally obliged to send us within required timescales. This information helped to inform us areas of focus as part of our inspection. We also asked for information from contract and commissioning authorities and the local safeguarding authority.
At the time of our inspection there were 20 people who used the service. We visited two supported living environments and were able to speak with one person who lived at one of the supported living environments and a member of staff working there. At the another supported living environment we were able to observe the care provided and interactions between two people who lived there and two staff working there. We contacted three supported living environments and spoke with three people who lived in those supported living environments. We also spoke with three staff present at the time of those telephone calls and were able to hear conversations with people and those staff during the telephone conversations. We also contacted nine staff by telephone to provide them with an opportunity to speak with us. We were able to speak with two of those staff. During the visit to the agency office we spoke with the operations manager, the acting manager and two staff we had spoken with prior to the visit.
We looked at documentation relating to people who used the service and staff, as well as the management of the service. This included five people’s care records, two people’s medicine records, the recruitment records of two staff, supervision and appraisal of three staff, training, supervision and appraisal records, minutes of meetings, quality audits and policies and procedures.
Updated
11 May 2017
This inspection took place between 19 and 25 April 2017 and was announced with the registered provider being given notice of the visit in line with our current methodology for inspecting domiciliary care agencies. The service was registered with the Commission in March 2015 and this was the first inspection of the service.
Voyage (DCA) South/West Yorkshire provides personal care to 20 people living in seven supported living environments and is registered to provide a service to people with a learning disability and/or autism, older people, people with a physical disability, sensory impairment and younger adults. The office is based in Barnsley.
The service had a registered manager in post at the time of our inspection, but this manager was not managing the service at the time of this inspection. The manager managing the service will be referred to as the acting manager in this report. The acting manager is also a registered manager of another registered location for the same registered provider that provides the same type of service. 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 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
People we spoke with and observed expressed satisfaction with the care and support they received.
We saw there were systems in place to protect people from the risk of harm. Staff we spoke with understood how to protect people from harm and were able to explain the safeguarding procedures to follow should an allegation of abuse be made.
We found the service employed enough staff to meet the needs of the people being supported. Staff had completed training to be able to meet people’s needs, and received regular supervision, which meant they were well supported. Staff also had an annual appraisal of their work.
We found people received a service that was based on their personal needs and wishes. Care records sampled identified people’s needs and preferences within person centred care plans, as well as any risks associated with their care and the environment they lived in.
Where people needed assistance taking their medicines this was administered in a timely way by staff who had been trained to carry out this role.
People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff support them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.
People were provided with information about how to raise a concern and how it would be addressed. People we spoke with told us they were confident that any concerns they raised would be dealt with promptly. The registered provider learnt lessons from concerns and complaints and improved systems and support where required.
There were systems in place to monitor and improve the quality of the service provided.