SSA Quality Care

Updated 28 March 2023

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 Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by one inspector and two Experts by Experience made telephone calls to people and their relatives. 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 houses and flats.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because we needed to be sure that the provider or registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection.

Inspection activity started on 1 February 2023 when we requested initial information from the service. Two Experts by Experience made telephone calls to people and their relatives on 2 March 2023. We visited the location's office on 3 March 2023. We continued to review evidence until 9 March 2023.

What we did before inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. We sought feedback from the local authority and professionals who work with the service. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with 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

During the inspection we met with the registered manager and nominated individual. The nominated individual is responsible for supervising the management of the service on behalf of the provider. We spoke with 4 office staff. We checked a range of required records. These included care plans, staff personnel and training records, a sample of policies, procedures and other guidance, audits, observations of staff practice and medicines administration records. We spoke with 10 people who use the service and 13 relatives.

Emails were sent to all staff inviting them to provide feedback to us. We received responses from 18 staff. We contacted community professionals who are involved in the care of people who were supported by the service and received 3 replies.

Updated 28 March 2023

About the service

SSA Quality Care is registered to provide personal care and support to people in their own homes. At the time of our inspection there were 60 people using the service. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. We considered this guidance as there were people using the service who have a learning disability and or who are autistic.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

People were supported by staff who had been recruited to ensure they had the right skills. Criminal record checks were completed for all staff. We found improvement could be made when obtaining employment references for new staff. We have made a recommendation about this.

People received kind and compassionate care. Staff protected and respected people’s privacy and dignity. They understood and responded to their individual needs. Comments from people included, “Very professional. They treat her with utmost respect. They respect her wishes; they do what she asks of them”, “They treat me very good. They speak kindly to me; I don’t have any problems” and “They leave me while I’m toileting, they respect my privacy that way.”

Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. The service worked well with other agencies to do so. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it.

People and those important to them, including advocates, were involved in planning their care.

Staff evaluated the quality of support provided to people, involving the person, their families and other professionals as appropriate.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection and update

The last rating for this service was good (published 14 February 2020).

At our last inspection we recommended the service sought advice from a reputable source on records relating to people’s decision making and how the service acted on feedback from people. We found the provider had acted on the recommendations and we found improvements had been made.

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for SSA Quality Care on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.