Bluebird Care (Bexley)

Updated 23 July 2021

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. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by one inspector and an expert by experience. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

Service and service type

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection

The inspection was announced 24 hours prior to arriving on site. This was because we needed to be sure that the provider or registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we held about the service since our last inspection. This included information received from the provider, as required by law, to report certain types of incidents and events. We sought feedback from the local authority who commissioned care from the provider. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return. This is information providers are required to send us with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection-

We spoke with nine people using the service and four relatives by telephone about their experience of the care provided. We spoke with 10 members of staff including, the registered manager, nominated individual, a senior supervisor, an administrative officer and six care workers. The nominated individual is responsible for supervising the management of the service on behalf of the provider.

We reviewed a range of records. This included 10 people’s care, risk management and medicines records. We looked at four staff files in relation to recruitment and a variety of records relating to the management of the service including policies and procedures, safeguarding logs, staff rota, accident and incident logs, quality checks and minutes of staff meetings.

Updated 23 July 2021

About the service

Bluebird Care (Bexley) is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats. The service provides a reablement service, personal care to adults, of whom some live with dementia. At the time of the inspection there were 104 people receiving personal care from the service.

Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

People benefitted from an improved service. However, travel time was not always enough during peak times.

We have made a recommendation about the deployment of staff.

People were kept safe from avoidable harm and were cared for by staff who understood how to protect them from abuse. Staff were knowledgeable about safeguarding vulnerable people and knew how to raise any concerns of abuse.

Risks to people's health and safety had been identified, assessed and had appropriate risk managed plans in place. People’s medicines were managed safely, and people were protected from the risk of infections and diseases. The service followed appropriate pre-employment checks before staff began working with the service and lessons were learnt from accidents and incidents to prevent repeat occurrences.

The management team demonstrated a commitment to provide high quality care and knew they had to be honest, transparent and open when things went wrong. Effective systems were in place to monitor and access the quality of the service. Feedback was sought from people, their relatives and staff to improve on the quality of the service provided. The service worked in partnership with key organisations and health and social care professionals to deliver an effective service. Staff knew of their individual roles and responsibilities, they told us they felt supported in their role and were happy working at the service.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection (and update)

The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 29 April 2019). The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of this service on 11 and 12 March 2019 and breaches of legal requirements were found. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve staffing and good governance.

We undertook this focused inspection to check they had followed their action plan and to confirm they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions Safe and Well-led which contain those requirements.

The ratings from the previous comprehensive inspection for those key questions not looked at on this occasion were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection. The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good. This is based on the findings at this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Bluebird Care (Bexley) on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.