Voyage (DCA) Swindon

Updated 16 November 2021

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.

As part of this inspection we looked at the infection control and prevention measures in place. This was conducted so we can understand the preparedness of the service in preventing or managing an infection outbreak, and to identify good practice we can share with other services.

Inspection team

Two inspectors attended the site office as part of this inspection. An Expert by Experience made 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. A medicines inspector reviewed safe medicine management away from site.

Service and service type

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats and specialist housing.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that 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 a short period 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 18 October and ended on 5 November. We visited the office location on 18 October.

What we did before the inspection

We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return. This is information providers are required to send us with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with six people who used the service and five relatives about their experience of the care provided. We spoke with eight members of staff including the operations manager, registered manager, and care staff. We reviewed a range of records. This included five people’s care records and multiple medication records. We looked at a variety of records relating to the management of the service, including policies and procedures.

After the inspection

We continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence found. We looked at staff files in relation to recruitment and staff supervision and quality assurance records. We spoke with three professionals who regularly visit the service.

Updated 16 November 2021

About the service

Voyage (DCA) Wiltshire is registered to deliver personal care to people in their own homes or in a shared house arrangement. 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. At the time of this inspection the service was supporting 42 people under the regulated activity and 61 people in total were using this service.

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 guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people.

Not all the key questions were inspected at this time, but the service was able to demonstrate how they were meeting the underpinning principles of Right support, right care, right culture in relation to the Safe and Well-led key questions.

Right support:

• People had risk assessments in their care plans, these detailed individual risks to people in a thorough and person-centred way.

• The service worked with external professionals to meet people’s needs in a timely way and ensure they got the support needed.

Right care:

• People praised the care they received and had built positive and comfortable relationships with staff.

• People told us they felt staff had kept them safe during the pandemic by following the necessary protocols in place.

Right culture:

• There were opportunities provided for people to be engaged and feedback their views about the home and quality of the service they received.

• People’s care plans and capacity assessments were written in a person-centred way and took into account individual preferences and characteristics of people.

Staff had the knowledge and confidence to identify safeguarding concerns and acted on these to keep people safe. The management team were open and transparent about the incidents reported and had spent time reviewing their processes in place and talking with staff about culture and expectations of behaviour.

Since the last inspection there have been improvements in how medicines are managed. People told us staff supported them with their medicines safely and had no concerns.

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 requires improvement (published 31 March 2020) and there were two breaches of regulation. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating. The inspection was also prompted in part due to increased numbers of notifications received to CQC by the service. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine these areas. We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from this concern.

This was a focused inspection which reviewed the key questions of Safe and Well-led only. We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.

The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good. This is based on the findings at this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Voyage (DCA) Wiltshire on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.