Updated 13 July 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. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
Inspection team
The inspection team consisted of one inspector, an assistant 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 care service.
Service and service type
This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes for a maximum of six weeks. The aim of the service is to provide people with support to help them regain independence and live as safely as possible at home following a period of illness or injury. People are discharged from the service either when they have gained the maximum independence they can, or when they are transferred to another service for on-going support with their care needs.
The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided. The registered manager was on annual leave at the time of the inspection visit to the office.
Notice of inspection
We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because we needed to be sure the provider or manager would be in the office to support the inspection. Inspection activity started on 20 June 2019 and ended on 24 June 2019 when we visited the office location.
What we did before the inspection
Before the inspection visit to the provider’s office we reviewed the information we held about the service and the provider. This included any notifications the provider had to send us by law and information we had received from members of the public about the quality of care being provided. We also reviewed the information the provider had sent to us in their Provider Information Return in April 2019. Providers are required to send us key information about their service, what they do well and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.
During the inspection
We spoke with eight people and four relatives about their experience of the care provided. We also spoke with nine members of staff including a county manager who represented the provider, three reablement practitioners, four support workers and a care co-ordinator.
We reviewed a range of records. This included seven people's care records and five medicine records. We also looked at four staff recruitment records and a variety of records regarding how the provider monitored the quality of care people received.