Updated 2 April 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
This inspection was carried out by one inspector and one Expert by Experience. The Expert by Experience spoke to people receiving personal care and after the site visit made phone calls to families to obtain their feedback.
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 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 and support.
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.
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.
Inspection activity started on 14 March 2022 and ended on 22 March 2022. We visited the location’s office on 14 March 2022.
What we did before the inspection
We reviewed information we had received about the service. This included complaints, safeguarding alerts and feedback from the local authority. It also included notifications of incidents sent to us by the service. The provider was not asked to complete a Provider Information Return (PIR) prior to this inspection. A PIR is information providers send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.
We used all this information to plan our inspection.
During the inspection
We spoke with 11 people living in Ansell Court and eight of their relatives and friends afterwards by telephone. We also spoke with eight members of staff including the registered manager, head of care, senior support worker and care assistants. We spoke with the nominated individual. The nominated individual is responsible for supervising the management of the service on behalf of the provider. We had feedback from a representative of the local authority.
We reviewed a range of records. This included four people's care records and six people's medicines records. We looked at five staff files in relation to staff recruitment.
A variety of records relating to the management of the service, including quality assurance, training records, complaints, and accidents and incidents were also reviewed.
After the inspection We continued to seek clarification from the registered manager to validate evidence found.