19 February 2016
During a routine inspection
Direct Health (Leicester) is a domiciliary care service providing care and support to people living in their own homes. The office is based in Leicester and the service currently provides care and support to people living in Leicester, Leicestershire and Coventry including older people and younger adults with physical disabilities, learning disabilities, and mental health needs. At the time of our inspection there were 100 people using the service.
The service had a registered manager. This 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 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
People using the service and relatives said the staff were caring and treated people with kindness and compassion. Staff valued the people using the service and took an interest in their lives, families, hobbies and interests. This helped them to build up relationships of trust with the people they supported.
People told us they were encouraged to make decisions about their care and support. Staff supported them to be independent and offered them choices at every opportunity. Staff were made aware of people’s specific instructions on how they wanted their personal care given. This helped to ensure that people were supported in a personalised and dignified way.
People told us they felt safe using the service and trusted the staff. Staff were trained in safeguarding (protecting people who use care service from abuse) and knew what to do if they had concerns about the well-being of any of the people using the service. If people were at risk in any areas of their lives staff were aware of this and knew how to help reduce the risk and keep people safe.
The staff team was multicultural reflecting Leicester’s population and some staff members were multilingual, speaking a range of local languages including Gujarati, Punjabi, and French. The service employed both male and female staff so if a person using the service wanted a staff member of a particular gender this could usually be accommodated.
Staff encouraged people to eat healthily. Particular diets, including halal, low cholesterol, and diabetic were catered for. If people needed encouragement to eat staff provided this and assisted people with their hydration, offering them frequent drinks. Staff were knowledgeable about people’s health care needs and knew when to alert health care professionals if they had any concerns.
Staff were safely recruited to help ensure they were suitable to work in a care environment. There were enough staff employed to meet people’s needs. If people needed two staff at a time to assist them they were provided. Staff were trained to administer medicines safely and people said they did this.
Most people using the service and relatives said staff were usually on time and stayed for the time they were supposed to. Some people thought there had been an improvement in staff time-keeping. However a minority of people said there were still issues with the timeliness of calls. The registered manager agreed to address this.
People using the service and relatives said they thought that overall Direct Health (Leicester) provided a good service. They told us they were frequently asked for their views and that staff and management listened to them and acted on what they said. Results of surveys and questionnaires showed that the majority of respondents were satisfied with the service they received.
Since we last inspected there had been a number of positive changes made to the service. These included better staff retention and an improvement to the timeliness of calls. The registered manager and staff had been nominated for The Great British Care Awards (a national celebration of excellence across the care sector) and were attending the finals in May 2016.