Magic Helping Hands

Updated 1 April 2023

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 3 inspectors and 2 Experts by Experience. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

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 provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations.

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

Notice of inspection

This inspection was announced.

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because we needed information from the service to contact people and relatives for their views and to be sure the registered manager would be available to meet with us.

Inspection activity started on 20 February 2023 and ended on 9 March 2023. We visited the location’s office on 22 and 23 February 2023.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. We sought feedback from the local authority and professionals who work with the service. 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 the monitoring activity that took place on 9 November 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 who was also the provider, 2 field care supervisors, the quality assurance manager and the care manager. We talked with 9 care staff members who came to the office to speak with us. We also spoke with 29 people who used the service and 24 relatives about the care they received.

We reviewed a range of records. This included 10 people’s support plans and 9 staff members recruitment files. We looked at a sample of the service’s quality assurance systems including medicine administration records, audits of quality and safety, safeguarding and policy and procedures. We received information from a social care professional.

Following the inspection, we continued to seek further clarification from the registered manager to validate evidence found.

Updated 1 April 2023

About the service

Magic Helping Hands is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to 140 people in their own homes. Support is provided to older people and younger adults, people with dementia and people with a physical and sensory disability. Support is also provided for people with a learning disability and autistic people.

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

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

The service was able to demonstrate how they were meeting most of the underpinning principles of Right support, right care, right culture.

Right culture

People were supported by staff who understood the wide range of strengths, impairments, or sensitivities people with a learning disability and/or autistic people may have. However, the provider acknowledged they needed to improve the way the service used language to describe people to ensure people were always empowered and respected.

We have made a recommendation about seeking good practice guidance in relation to language.

The provider needed some improvement to the way the service evaluated the quality of support provided to people. There were systems in place to understand what was happening in the service, but they needed to be used more effectively to provide oversight of the service. The registered manager did not currently have any external support to help them to monitor the quality of care being provided.

We have made a recommendation about auditing processes and support for the registered manager in their management role.

People and those important to them, including advocates, were involved in planning their care.

Right Support

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 and their families told us the service enabled people to have a good quality of life. Staff focused on people’s strengths and promoted what they could do, so people had a fulfilling and meaningful everyday life. Staff supported people to take part in activities and pursue their interests.

People’s care and support plans reflected their range of needs, and this promoted their wellbeing and enjoyment of life. Staff enabled people to access health and social care support and worked with them and their families to access health and social care support and appointments.

Staff supported people with their medicines in a way that promoted their independence and achieved the best possible health outcome. Staff followed the providers infection prevention control policy and wore personal protective equipment to keep people safe.

Right Care

People received kind and compassionate care. Staff treated people with respect and dignity. They knew people well and responded to their individual needs.

People who had individual ways of communicating, such as body language, sounds, Makaton (a form of sign language), pictures and symbols could interact comfortably with staff and others involved in their care. Staff had the necessary skills to understand them.

Staff had relevant training and knowledge in how to protect people from poor care and abuse. The service worked well with other agencies to keep people safe.

The service had enough appropriately skilled staff to meet people’s needs and keep them safe. The provider worked effectively to reduce the impact of challenges in staff recruitment.

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 requires improvement (published 17 December 2019).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service and to follow up the areas that required improvement from the last inspection. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe, effective, 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 changed from requires improvement to good based on the findings of this inspection.

At our last inspection we recommended that improvements were needed to end of life care and oral health care. At this inspection we found the provider had acted on the recommendations and improvements had been made.

The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good based on the findings of this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Magic Helping Hands 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.