Updated 23 May 2019
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. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, 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 inspector carried out the inspection.
Service and service type:
Homecare4u Kidderminster is a domiciliary care agency. People receive a personal care service in their own home.
Not everyone using Homecare4u 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.
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:
The inspection site visit was announced and started on 3 May 2019 and ended on this date. We gave short notice of the inspection because we wanted to be sure a senior member of staff was available to support the inspection.
What we did:
We reviewed information we had received about the service. This included the initial registration documents that we held and details about incidents the provider must notify us about, such as allegations of abuse.
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 and conduct our inspection.
During the site visit, we spoke with the registered manager, the care co-ordinator, a field care supervisor and the area manager. We reviewed a range of records. These included five people's care and medication records, two staff files to check recruitment, training and supervision. We reviewed records relating to the management of the service and, training and supervision for all the staff. We reviewed how the provider and the registered manager completed their own internal quality checks on the care delivery.
After the inspection we telephoned five people who used the service, three relatives and four members of staff to gain their view on how the service was managed and care was delivered. You can see what they told us in the main body of the report.
We provided telephone feedback about our findings of this visit to the registered manager on the 8 May 2019.