7 March 2019
During a routine inspection
At the time of the inspection, the service was providing personal care to 30 older adults aged 64 and over.
People’s experience of using this service:
• The service was not consistently safe. Risks to people's health and safety were not sufficiently assessed to ensure safe care. This was a breach of Regulation 12 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.
• The service was not consistently well-led. There were no robust quality assurance processes in place to monitor the quality of the services provided for people, including accuracy of care records. We made a recommendation about this.
• Staff were not supported to up-date their knowledge and skills in all areas required for their role. We made a recommendation about this.
• People’s received the necessary support to manage their medicines as prescribed, but staff were not provided with guidelines on how to support people to take PRN (‘as required’) medicines safely.
• The staff team were trained and applied the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) principles in practice as necessary.
• Processes were followed to review and monitor staff’s developmental needs.
• Staff had to undertake appropriate checks before they were employed by the service.
• Systems were in place to provide immediate support to people if staff had noticed people being at risk to harm or when incidents and accidents took place.
• Staff aided people if they required support to prepare their meals or attend to their health needs.
• People were treated with dignity and kindness and staff were respectful towards people’s privacy.
• Staff encouraged people’s independence and decision making about their daily activities.
• Care plans included personal information about people.
• People provided feedback about the quality of the services they received.
• Staff received guidance on how to support people at the end of their lives.
• People felt that the registered manager was responsive to their care needs.
• There was a clear management structure in place with shared responsibilities to ensure good care delivery for people.
Rating at last inspection:
• The service was previously inspected on 11 October 2016 and was given a rating of Good in all key questions.
Why we inspected:
• This inspection was part of our scheduled plan of visiting services to check the safety and quality of care people received.
Follow up:
• We will continue to monitor the service to ensure that people receive safe, compassionate, high quality care. Further inspection will be planned in line with our re-inspection programme. If any concerning information is received, we may inspect the service sooner.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk