Updated 8 January 2019
The inspection:
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked 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.
Inspection team:
The inspection consisted of 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 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. It provides a service to older adults and younger disabled adults.
Not everyone using Care Homes Stoke receives regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided.
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:
We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care. We needed to be sure that they would be in.
Inspection site visit activity started on the 6 December 2018 and ended on the 11 December 2018. It included telephone calls to people and relatives to gain feedback about the service and telephone calls to staff who provided support to people. We visited the office location on 10 December 2018 to see the registered manager/office staff and to review care records and policies and procedures.
What we did:
We used the information we held about the service to formulate our planning tool. This included information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return. We require this information from providers 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 other information we held about the service. This included notifications about events that had happened at the service, which the provider was required to send us by law. For example, safeguarding concerns, serious injuries and deaths that had occurred at the service.
We spoke with two people who used the service and eight relatives to gain their experiences of the service provided. We spoke with six staff, the registered manager and the provider.
We viewed four people’s care records to confirm what people and staff had told us. We also looked at documents that showed how the service was managed which included training and induction records for staff employed at the service and records that showed how the service was monitored by the registered manager and provider.