Community Care Team Ltd

Updated 11 September 2018

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.

This comprehensive inspection took place on 17 July 2018 and was announced. We called the service 48 hours before to arrange our visit because we wanted to be sure we could access the agency office and speak with senior management.

The inspection was carried out by two adult social care inspectors and an expert-by-experience. An expert-by-experience is a person who has personal experience of caring for someone who has used this type of service. The expert-by-experience had experience of caring for older people and community based services.

We visited the agency office and with the permission of people who used the service we visited four of them in their own homes.

During our inspection we spoke with 11 people who received care from the service. We also spoke with two relatives, 14 care workers, the care coordinator and office administrator. We looked at care records for seven people who used the service and at the recruitment and personnel records for six staff. We also looked at records relating to compliments and complaints and how the provider checked the quality of the service.

Before the inspection, the provider completed a Provider Information Return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We reviewed the information we held about the service, including the information in the PIR, before we visited the service. We also contacted the local authority commissioning and social work teams and local health care providers for their views of the service.

We also used a planning tool to collate all this evidence and information prior to visiting the agency.

Updated 11 September 2018

Community Care Team Ltd 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 mainly to older adults. Not everyone using the agency receives regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with 'personal care'; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided.

This comprehensive inspection was announced, which meant that we gave the provider 48 hours' notice of our inspection, in line with CQC guidance for inspection of domiciliary care services. This is so we can arrange for someone to be at the agency office to assist with access to information we need to see. We visited the agency office on 17 July 2018.

At our last inspection we rated the service as requiring improvement and we found one breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 regulation 11 Need for consent. Following the last inspection, we asked the provider to complete an action plan to show what they would do and by when to improve the key questions of safe, effective and well-led to at least good.

At this inspection we found that the provider had completed those actions and we found the service was meeting the fundamental standards of quality and safety. We found improvements had been made in establishing whether people had the capacity to make certain decisions relating to their health and care. Where they could not we saw relevant people had done so or decisions had been made in peoples best interest and were recorded. This meant appropriate consent had been obtained.

Providers of health and social care services are required to inform us of significant events that happen such as allegations of abuse. Whilst the provider had dealt with such events appropriately they had not always notified CQC. The failure to notify us of matters of concern as outlined in the registration regulations is a breach of the provider's condition of registration and this matter is being dealt with outside of the inspection process.

There was a registered manager in post who was on annual leave at the time of our visit. 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.

There were sufficient numbers of staff available to meet people's needs. Staff training was on going and they had received appropriate training to safely support and care for people in their own homes Staff were regularly supported by senior staff through staff meetings, observations in practise, supervisions and appraisals.

We received mixed comments from people about whether the service was managed well in relation to the planning of visit times and deployment of staff. We have made a recommendation that the provider uses feedback received to take action to improve on areas that could be better for people who use the service and for the morale of the staff employed.

When employing fit and proper persons the recruitment procedures had included all of the required checks of suitability. Hazards to people's safety had been identified and appropriately managed.

People received the support they needed to take their medicines safely. The staff identified if people were unwell and supported them to contact health professionals.

Auditing and quality monitoring systems were in place that allowed the service to demonstrate effectively the safety and quality of the service provision.

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