Archived: Welcome Independent Living Limited

Updated 26 June 2015

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was carried out to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

The provider was given 48 hours’ notice because the location provides a domiciliary care service.

The inspection was carried by two inspectors. On the first day of inspection we visited the office premises and spoke with the registered manager and the nominated individual for the service and other members of the senior staff team. We also looked at four people’s support plans and risk assessments and other records relating to the management of the service such as training records, staff recruitment records, quality assurance audits and policies and procedures.

In a three week period following the inspection we spoke with fifteen people who used the service and thirteen staff by telephone to ask them about their views and opinions of the service provided.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. This included information from the provider and from the local authority contracts and commissioning service in Calderdale.

Before our inspections we usually ask the provider to send us a provider information return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We did not ask the provider to complete a PIR on this occasion.

Updated 26 June 2015

Welcome Independent Living provides home care services in the Calderdale area of West Yorkshire from spacious office premises in Hebden Bridge. At the time of the inspection the service was providing care and support to fifty five people and employed approximately eighty members of staff.

We inspected the main office premises on the 18 March 2015. The provider was given 48 hours’ notice because the location provides a domiciliary care service. Our last inspection of the service took place on the 14 August 2014 and at that time we found the agency was not meeting four out of the five regulations we looked at. These related to staff recruitment and training, record keeping and quality assurance monitoring. We asked the provider to make improvements and following the inspection they sent us an action plan outlining how they intended to address the breaches in regulations.

During this inspection we found significant steps had been taken to improve service delivery although some areas requiring further improvement were identified.

There was a registered manager in post. A registered manager 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.

We found the organisation’s staff recruitment and selection procedures were now robust which helped to ensure people were supported by staff suitable to work in the caring profession. We also saw all staff had received mandatory training and that one to one supervision meetings took place which helped staff to carry out their roles effectively. However, we found the staff disciplinary procedures designed to protect people who used the service from poor work practices were not always being followed.

The care/support plans we looked at were person centred and were reviewed on a regular basis to make sure they provided accurate and up to date information and were fit for purpose.

The staff we spoke with were able to describe how individual people preferred their care and support to be delivered and the importance of treating people with respect in their own homes. People who used the service and their relatives told us staff were very caring and always provided care and support in line with their agreed support plan.

However, we were concerned about the number of calls the agency had missed. We were also concerned that on at least two occasion’s only one member of staff had provided people with care and support when two staff should have attended. This potentially put people at risk of not receiving safe care and treatment.

The provider had policies and procedures relating to the safe administration of medication in people's own homes which gave guidance to staff on their roles and responsibilities.

There was a complaints procedure available which enabled people to raise any concerns or complaints about the care or treatment they received. The majority of people we spoke with told us they were aware of the complaints procedure and would have no hesitation in making a formal complaint if they had any concerns about the standard of care provided.

We saw the management of the service was more structured and the provider had started to introduce a more robust quality assurance monitoring system that continually monitored and identified shortfalls in service provision. However, the provider and registered manager were aware that more work was required before the systems in place were fully operational and consistently applied.

We found one breach of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2010.

The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 come into force on 1 April 2015. They replace the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2010. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.