The Care Worker Agency

Updated 17 November 2022

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 Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by one inspector.

Service and service type

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

Registered Manager

This service is required to have a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. 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.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because we needed to be sure that the provider or manager would be in the office to support the inspection. We also wanted time to obtain contact details of people who used the service and relatives, where appropriate.

Inspection activity started on 21 September 2022 and ended on 27 September 2022. We visited the office location on 21 September 2022.

What we did before inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since our last 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 one person who used the service about their experience of the care provided and three relatives. We spoke with five members of staff including the registered manager and the Nominated Individual. The nominated individual is responsible for supervising the management of the service on behalf of the provider.

We reviewed a range of records. This included three people’s care records and medication records. We looked at three staff files in relation to recruitment and staff supervision. A variety of records relating to the management of the service, including policies and procedures were reviewed.

Updated 17 November 2022

About the service

The Care Worker Agency is a domiciliary care agency providing care to people living in their own homes, so they can live as independently as possible. At the time of our inspection the service was supporting 42 people with personal care. Some of the people supported had a learning disability or autism.

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.

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 statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. We considered this guidance as there were people using the service who have a learning disability and or who are autistic.

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

People’s risk assessments were completed in accordance with their assessed needs. Staff were happy with their rostered hours, and people told us staff mostly came on time. If staff were late, they would receive communication from the office. People received their required medications on time by staff who were trained to do this.

Quality assurance procedures were in place and had highlighted where improvement was needed. Staff told us they felt they were able to speak up to the registered manager and the provider whenever they needed to. Team meetings took place, and people were routinely asked for written and verbal feedback about their experience of The Care Worker Agency.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (report published 3 August 2018).

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to risk management and closed cultures. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only. For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

The overall rating for the service has remained good.

We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from this concern. Please see the safe and well led sections of this full report.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for The Care Worker Agency on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.