Updated 27 November 2019
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. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
Inspection team:
The inspection was carried out by one inspector.
Service and service type:
This service is a small domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats. It provides a service to older adults, and younger disabled adults. At the time of our inspection, there were four people using the service.
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. However, we were told that the registered manager had given notice to leave the service shortly after our inspection. We were assured that arrangements had been put in place to cover the post until a newly appointed manager took up their post in November.
Notice of inspection:
We gave a short period notice of the inspection because some of the people using it could not consent to a home visit from an inspector. This meant that we had to arrange for a ‘best interests’ decision about this.
Inspection site visit activity started on 26 September 2019 and ended on 2 October 2019. We visited the office location to see the registered manager and to review care records and policies and procedures.
What we did:
Prior to the inspection we reviewed any notifications we had received from the service. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to tell us about by law.
We reviewed the Provider Information Return we had asked the service to complete. This is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We also reviewed any information about the service that we had received from members of the public and external agencies.
During the inspection we looked at records relating to four people’s care, four staff recruitment records, training records and complaints. We also looked at what audits and systems they had in place to check on the quality of service provided. We spoke with the registered manager and three staff members. We also met with four people while they were attending a coffee morning at the agency’s office.
After the inspection we received further feedback from two people who use the service and two staff members by email.