Updated 22 June 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:
This inspection was carried out by one adult social care inspector.
Service and service type:
Oldham Care & Support at home is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. 170 people lived across six schemes at the time of our inspection, although not everybody received a regulated activity from the service. Two of the six schemes had been taken over by the provider in April 2019.
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 we needed to be sure that staff would be in the office to support the inspection.
We visited the office location on 9 May 2019 to meet with the registered manager and registered provider; and to review care records and policies and procedures. We also visited two of the six extra care schemes on this day to meet people at home and staff. We made calls to people and relatives on 14 May 2019.
What we did:
Prior to the inspection, we reviewed all the information we held about the service including notifications received by CQC. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to tell us by law. We contacted Healthwatch Oldham and the local authority quality team and found that they had no information to share with us about the service.
During our inspection we spoke with seven people using the service, five relatives and six members of care staff. We also spoke with the registered manager, the registered provider and the business administration officer. We also contacted three health and social care professionals who had worked with the service.
We reviewed a range of records. This included six care records, three staff recruitment files and supervision and the training records for all staff. We also reviewed records relating to the management of the service and a variety of policies and procedures developed and implemented by the provider.