Background to this inspection
Updated
3 July 2021
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 Care Act 2014.
Inspection team
The inspection was conducted by two inspectors and two Expert by Experiences. 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 homes.
Notice of inspection
We gave the service notice of the inspection. This was so the provider could gain consent from some people and relatives for us to contact them for their feedback about the quality of care being received. We also needed to be sure that the provider or registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection when we visited.
Inspection activity started on 24 May 2021 and ended on 2 June 2021. We visited the office location on 2 June 2021.
What we did before the inspection
We reviewed the information we had been received about the service since the last inspection. This included feedback from the public and important incidents the provider had told us about. We obtained feedback from the local authority who commission the service. We used this information to plan our inspection.
The provider was not asked to complete a provider information return prior to this inspection. This is information we require providers to send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We took this into account when we inspected the service and made the judgements in this report.
During the inspection
We spoke with 24 people who used the service and five relatives about their experience of the care provided. We gathered feedback from 13 members of staff including the regional manager who represented the provider, registered manager, care and office staff.
We reviewed a range of records. This included 10 people’s care records and multiple medication records. We looked at three staff files in relation to recruitment, training and staff supervision. A variety of records relating to the management of the service were reviewed.
Updated
3 July 2021
About the service
Carewatch (Norfolk) is a domiciliary service providing personal care to people in their own homes. 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. At the time of the inspection, 158 people were receiving support with personal care.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
The provider had ensured that effective systems were in place to protect people from the risk of abuse and avoidable harm. Risks to people’s safety had been assessed and managed well.
There were enough skilled and knowledgeable staff to complete people’s care visits. The provider had completed the required checks on new staff to make sure they were safe to work at the service.
People received their medicines when they needed them and staff took precautions to reduce the spread of infection, including COVID-19. When things had gone wrong, lessons had been learnt to improve the quality of care provided.
People were involved in making decisions about their care and they told us their care needs were met. Some people said their care visits were on occasion, at inconsistent times or late. The provider had already recognised this issue and was actively reviewing people’s care visits with the aim of improving this area.
The culture within the service was open and people and staff felt comfortable to raise concerns. When mistakes had been made, the provider had acknowledged and learnt from these to improve the care provided.
There was good leadership in place. Governance systems were effective at monitoring and driving improvement within the service and the provider worked well with other organisations for the benefit of people using 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 (and update)
The last rating for this service was Requires Improvement (published 4 July 2019). At that inspection we found the provider had not notified CQC of important incidents and this resulted in a breach 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
The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about staffing levels, the management of risk’s to people’s safety, medicines management and people not receiving care to meet their individual needs. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks.
We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.
We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from these concerns. Please see the safe, responsive and well-led sections of this full report.
The overall rating for the service has changed from Requires Improvement to Good. This is based on the findings at this inspection.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.