Archived: Barking and Dagenham Branch

Updated 17 May 2022

The inspection

This was a focused inspection to check whether the provider had met the requirements of the breaches in relation to Regulation 12(safe care and treatment) and Regulation 17(Good governance) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection was completed by one inspector.

Service and service type

This service provides care and support to people living in specialist ‘extra care’ housing. Extra care housing is purpose-built or adapted single household accommodation in a shared site or building. The accommodation is bought or rented and is the occupant’s own home. People’s care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for extra care housing; this inspection looked at people’s personal care.

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 registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection.

What we did before inspection

Before the inspection, we reviewed the information we held about the registered provider, including previous notifications and information about any complaints and safeguarding concerns received. A notification is information about important events which the registered provider is required to send to us by law. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. We used information gathered as part of monitoring activity that took place on 21 March 2022 to help plan the inspection and inform our judgements. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with the registered manager. We reviewed three people’s medicine administration records for over a period of three months, three staff personnel files, staff rota, audits and other records relating to the management of the service such as staff supervision, staff training and staff spot checks. After the inspection, we continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence found. We spoke with two people who used the service and three relatives to obtain their views of the service. We also contacted four members of staff to ask them questions about their roles and to confirm information we had received about them during our inspection.

Updated 17 May 2022

About the service

Barking and Dagenham Branch is an extra care service that provides personal care to 63 people across four sites. People using the service lived in flats across Barking and Dagenham.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found.

People’s medicines were managed safely. Risks associated with people’s care and support had been assessed and there was guidance in place to keep them safe. There were enough staff to meet people’s needs. Effective recruitment practices were followed to help ensure all staff were fit, able and qualified to do their jobs. There were systems in place for the monitoring and prevention of infection.

There was an open and inclusive culture; Staff, people, relatives and other external professionals were encouraged to provide feedback to help improve the service. The provider had an effective quality assurance system in place to monitor the quality of the service and the support it provided to people. There were clear lines of responsibility and accountability within the management structure.

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 6 November 2019) and there were breaches of regulation. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of this service on 25 September 2019 and 10 October 2019. Breaches of legal requirements were found on safe care and treatment and good governance.

We undertook this focused inspection to check they had followed their action plan and to confirm they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions Safe and Well-led which contain those requirements.

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 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 Barking and Dagenham Branch 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.