Archived: Langstone Community Care

Updated 23 August 2016

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check 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.

Our inspection took place on 14 July 2016 and was announced. We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection because it is small and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care. We needed to be sure that they would be in.

The inspection was carried out by one inspector.

We asked the provider to complete 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. Due to technical problems a PIR was not available and we took this into account when we inspected the service and made the judgements in this report. We reviewed information we held about the service. This included notifications received from the provider about deaths, accidents/incidents and safeguarding alerts which they are required to send us by law.

We requested information about the service from the Local Authority (LA). They have responsibility for funding and monitoring the quality of the service. We received information from them which we used as part of the inspection of this service.

We visited the provider’s main office location. We spoke with two people (as the other people using the service were unable to share their views), two relatives, two members of the care staff and the registered manager. We reviewed two care records for people that used the service, the records for three members of the care staff and records related to the management and quality of the service.

Updated 23 August 2016

The inspection took place on 14 July 2016 and was announced. We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection because it is small and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care. We needed to be sure that they would be in. At our last inspection on the 25 July 2013 the provider was compliant with the regulations inspected.

Langstone Community Care is registered to provide personal care services to adults in their own homes or supported living environment. People the service supports have a range of needs including physical disability and learning disability. On the day of the inspection, six people were receiving support. There was a registered manager in post. 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.

People were safe within the service. We found that care staff knew how to keep people safe and what actions they should take were they concerned about people’s safety. People received their medicines as they were prescribed.

Care staff received appropriate support to ensure they had the skills and knowledge to meet people’s needs. The requirements of the Mental Capacity Act (2005) the provider ensured was being adhered to and staff received the appropriate training to ensure people’s human rights were protected. We saw people’s consent being sought before they were supported.

The provider had support plans in place to meet people’s needs which people were involved in. People were supported by staff who were friendly and kind in how they met their needs. People’s dignity, privacy and independence was respected.

The support people received was responsive to their needs and people were involved in the decisions that related to how they were supported. The provider had a complaints process in place to enable people to raise any concerns they had as part of a complaints process.

We found that where people lacked capacity that an appropriate mental capacity assessment was not taking place. Where the registered manager carried out spot checks or audits there was no documentation to substantiate this. The provider did not carry out quality audits.

We found that the questionnaire used to gather views were aimed specifically at people rather than a general view of the quality of the service being delivered.