Archived: Coventry Community Care Services DCA

Updated 2 July 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 planned 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 inspection took place on 28 May 2015 and was announced. We told the provider we would be coming so they could ensure they would be in the office to speak with us and arrange for us to speak with care staff. The inspection was conducted by 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 care service.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. We looked at the statutory notifications the service had sent us. A statutory notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send to us by law. We also reviewed the information in the provider’s information return (PIR). This is a form we asked the provider to send to us before we visited. The PIR asked the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. They also sent a list of people who used the service so we could contact people to ask them their views of the service.

We spoke by phone to 19 people who used the service, or their relative. During our visit we spoke with two care workers, a care co-ordinator, a team leader, an administrator, the registered manager, and a regional trainer for the organisation. We also contacted the local authority contracts team and asked for their views; they had no concerns about the service.

We reviewed three people’s care plans and daily records to see how their care and support was planned and delivered. We checked whether staff had been recruited safely and were trained to deliver the care and support people required. We looked at other records related to people’s care and how the service operated including the service’s quality assurance audits and records of complaints.

Updated 2 July 2015

Coventry Community Care Services is a domiciliary care agency which provides personal support to people in their own homes. At the time of our visit the agency supported 127 people.

We inspected Coventry Community Care Services on 28 May 2015. We told the provider we were coming so they could arrange for staff to be available to talk with us about the service.

The service has a registered manager. 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.

People and their relatives told us they felt safe with their care workers. Care workers were trained in safeguarding adults and understood how to protect people from abuse. There were processes to minimise risks to people’s safety; these included procedures to manage identified risks with people’s care and for managing people’s medicines safely. Checks were carried out prior to staff starting work to ensure their suitability to work with people who used the service.

People told us staff were kind and caring and had the right skills and experience to provide the care and support they required. The registered manager and staff understood the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA), and supported people in line with these principles. There were enough suitably trained staff to deliver safe and effective care to people.

Care plans and risk assessments contained relevant information to help staff provide the personalised care people required. People said they had consistent care workers who arrived on time and stayed the agreed length of time. People were involved in their care and were asked for their views and opinions about the service they received.

People told us they knew how to make a complaint if they needed to. People and staff were confident they could raise any concerns or issues with staff in the office and the registered manager, knowing they would be listened to and acted on.

There were processes to monitor the quality of the service provided and understand the experiences of people who used the service. This was through regular communication with people and staff, checks on records, unannounced checks on care staff working in people’s homes, returned surveys and a programme of checks and audits.