Joint Community Rehabilitation Service

Updated 24 May 2019

The inspection:

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.

Inspection team:

The inspection team consisted of one inspector.

Service and service type:

Joint Community Rehabilitation Service is an integrated intermediate service with staff from the local authority and hospital trust work collaboratively, to provide reablement support for older people and young adults, who live in their own home. People were supported by staff with the regulated activity of ‘personal care.’

There was a registered manager. 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.

Notice of inspection:

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit. We did this because management may have been out of the office supporting staff or visiting people who used the service.

The inspection took place between the 29 January and 7 February 2019. This included talking to people who used the service and separate site visits to look at records and talk to staff.

What we did:

We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return (PIR). This is 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 looked at this and other information we held about the service. We took this into account when we inspected the service and made the judgements in this report.

During the inspection we reviewed the information provided, spoke to people and staff and gathered information about the management of the service.

This included:

• Notifications we received from the service

• Staff recruitment files

• Training records

• Four people's care records

• Records of accidents, incidents and complaints

• Audits and quality assurance reports

• We spoke with eight people using the service and two relatives.

• We spoke with 14 members of staff, including the registered manager, intermediate care manager, deputy manager, practice manager, operations manager, support staff, resource officers and the training and development lead.

• We emailed five therapists, we had a response from one and spoke to them during the inspection.

After inspection we were sent additional evidence and information that we requested, to corroborate our judgements of the service.

Updated 24 May 2019

People’s experience of using this service:

People said they received an excellent service from JCR. They were fully involved in decisions about the support they received and developed their support plan with staff. One person told us, “The staff are very good, they know exactly how much support I need, I have been very lucky.”

People were clearly at the centre of the service; they were consulted about every aspect of the support they received and felt respected and listened to. One person said, “We planned what I would do and how staff would support me, it has worked out really well. Really pleased.”

Staff were motivated to respect people’s privacy and dignity and provide personalised care in a kind and compassionate way. One member of staff told us, “I am so happy doing this job, it is the best job I have ever done.”

Staff said they got to know people very well as they talked to them about their needs, life story, interests and preferences and used this information to discuss and agree their specific goals. “One person said, “I was having difficulty getting around my home, but since they have been helping me I can walk with sticks and I will be learning to get in and out of cars soon, so I can go shopping, really looking forward to that.”

People said they felt very safe when staff provided the support they needed. Staff demonstrated a good understanding of abuse and how to protect people from harm. They knew who to contact if they had any concerns and were confident appropriate action would be taken.

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. Staff consistently asked for people’s consent before assisting or encouraging people to be independent in a safe way.

Risk was reduced as much as possible through an assessment of the person’s physical and mental health needs, with guidance for staff to reduce risk as much as possible. An environmental risk assessment of people’s home’s identified potential risk and aids were provided to support people to make safe decisions. Such as, a mobility aid to assist a person to move around safely. One person told us, “They were all lovely. They made sure I was safe as I moved around the home after my fall and I can do most things for myself now.”

About the service:

Joint Community Rehabilitation Service (JCR) is based in Firwood House, in the Hampden Park area of Eastbourne, and supports people living in the surrounding areas. The service provides personal care to older people and younger adults living in their own homes, with the focus on staff supporting people to regain their independence. This may be following a period in hospital, or if the person’s health and care needs have changed whilst at home, support from JCR staff means people are able to stay at home and remain at their optimum level of independence. The service is available from one to six weeks, dependent on people’s individual needs and, can be extended if alternative care arrangements are required for ongoing support. At the time of our inspection, 80 people used the service.

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

Rating at last inspection:

Good. (Report published I June 2016).

At this inspection we found the service remained Good with caring question rated as Outstanding.

Why we inspected:

This was a planned inspection based on the rating at the last inspection.

Follow up:

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