28 December 2016
During a routine inspection
A registered manager was in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the CQC 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.
People informed us they felt safe with staff, who were described as “trustworthy” and “reliable”. Staff demonstrated their understanding of how to protect people from the risk of abuse and harm, and had received training in relation to safeguarding adults and children. They were aware of how to report any concerns about a person’s safety to their line manager; however, some staff were not confident about how to use the provider’s whistleblowing procedure in order to contact external organisations if necessary. Systems were in place to identify risks to people’s safety and welfare, and written information was provided for staff to enable them to mitigate these risks.
Staff were provided with training, support and supervision in order to meet people’s needs and wishes. Recruitment practices demonstrated that staff had been robustly vetted in order to determine their suitability to work for the provider. People told us they thought there were sufficient staff to ensure their personal care and support was provided in a stable manner by regular care staff, although a few people told us that they had previously been unsatisfied with inconsistently delivered care at weekends.
People confirmed that staff spoke with them politely and asked for their consent before they provided personal care and other support. Staff spoke about the importance of always supporting people in a respectful way that maintained people’s independence, dignity and privacy.
The individual assessments and care plans we looked at showed that people were consulted about how they wished their personal care and support to be delivered. People’s care plans were regularly reviewed and amended when necessary to reflect any changes to how their care and support should be provided.
The provider issued people and their relatives, where applicable, with written information about how to make a complaint. People told us they were confident about speaking with the registered manager if they had any concerns and felt that he would promptly respond in an open and professional way.
Practices were in place to monitor the quality of the service, which included the auditing of a range of records and ‘spot check’ visits to people’s homes. Different methods were used by the provider in order to seek people’s views about the quality of the service, which included telephone monitoring calls, detailed surveys and other correspondence that invited people to comment about their care. People told us that the provider had listened to their feedback and made improvements.