Background to this inspection
Updated
23 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:
One adult social care inspector and an Expert by Experience conducted the inspection. 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:
Tattenhall Local Care is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats in the community. It provides a service to older adults.
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.
Notice of inspection:
We gave the service 24 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small and the manager is often out of the office. We needed to be sure that someone was available to support the inspection.
What we did:
Our plan took into account information the provider sent us since the last inspection. We also considered information about incidents the provider must notify us about, such as safeguarding concerns; We obtained information from the local authority commissioners. We assessed the information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.
During the inspection we spoke with 12 people using the service, the registered manager and two members of staff.
We looked at three people’s care records and four staff recruitment files. We looked at other information relating to the day to day management of the service, such as quality monitoring records and minutes from meetings.
Details are in the Key Questions below.
The report includes evidence and information gathered by the inspector and the Expert by Experience.
Updated
23 January 2019
What life is like for people using this service:
Staff went above and beyond to protect people from the risk of social isolation. They treated people with kindness and all the people we spoke with made positive comments about them.
People’s comments reflected that very positive relationships had been established between themselves and staff.
Staff and the service contributed to the community through their actions and by making charitable donations to good causes. The service had received 35 compliments over a period of 11 months which reflected positively on the quality of the support being provided.
People each had a personalised care record in place which outlined to staff how they should be supported. These contained information about people’s personal preferences and preferred daily routines.
There had been no complaints about the service. However, people confirmed that they found the registered manager to be approachable and told us they would not hesitate to raise any concerns.
People commented that they had been involved in the development of their care. Positive outcomes had been identified for each person which were reviewed on a routine basis. People told us that staff worked in “partnership” with them and that they felt part of a team.
People were protected from the risk of abuse. Staff had successfully identified and taken appropriate action to keep people safe where they had concerns.
People received their medicines as prescribed and staff were completing paperwork appropriately to show this had been given.
Staff followed infection control processes which helped prevent the spread of infection.
Where incidents had occurred lessons had been learnt to prevent these issues from reoccurring.
Staff had received the training they needed to support people effectively.
People complimented staff on their cooking skills. Staff had also received training in food hygiene.
People had been supported to access health professionals where required.
The registered provider had a policy in place to support effective communication for those people who had additional communication needs.
The registered provider had quality monitoring processes in place which had identified and acted upon areas that needed improvement.
Staff had been given the opportunity to give feedback on the service and this information was used to make improvements.
More information is in Detailed Findings below
Rating at last inspection: Good (previous report published 26 April 2016).
About the service: Tattenhall Hall local care is a service that provides care and support to people in their own homes. At the time of the inspection there were 48 people receiving care and support from the service.
Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection based on the rating at the last inspection.
Follow up: We will continue to monitor intelligence we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If any concerning information is received we may inspect sooner.