Laurel Homecare Ltd

Updated 4 November 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

The inspection team was one inspector and one bank inspector.

Service and service type

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It currently provides personal care to people living in their own homes.

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.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post. The registered manager was one of the owners of the provider organisation.

Notice of inspection

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit. This was because it is a small service and we needed to be sure that the provider or registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection.

Inspection activity started on 11 October 2022 and ended on 18 October 2022. We visited the location’s office on 11 October 2022.

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. The provider was not asked to complete an updated 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.

During the inspection

We spoke with three people who used the service and four relatives. We spoke with the registered manager and six members of the staff team including those with responsibility for delivering care and support and oversight. We visited the office and looked at records related to five people’s care, and the oversight and management of the service. This included training records, meeting minutes, staff newsletters, internal oversight tools and audits.

Updated 4 November 2022

About the service

Laurel Homecare Ltd provides personal care to people living in their own homes. Not everyone supported by 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 the service was providing personal care to 35 people, two of whom were in hospital.

The provider also runs a day centre. This provision is not regulated by CQC.

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

People told us they felt safe with staff. Relatives were confident their loved ones were safe. Staff had received safeguarding training and there were robust systems in place to manage safeguarding concerns.

Staff understood the risks people faced and supported them in ways that reduced these risks. New risks were identified and plans put in place to reduce their impact.

There were enough safely recruited and trained staff to meet people’s needs. The registered manager monitored staffing capacity to ensure this was the case.

People received their medicines safely and systems were in place to ensure medicines administration was monitored and staff competency was ensured.

Staff were confident in their understanding of infection control measures. People told us staff wore PPE appropriately.

There were systems in place to ensure any restriction of people’s liberty was identified and managed appropriately.

Improvements had continued to be embedded in the oversight of the service. There was an open culture within the staff team which meant staff felt valued and able to focus on the people they supported. People and staff were complimentary about the management team. Audits and checks were completed to monitor the quality and safety of the service.

There were robust processes in place to drive improvement and to continually develop the service in line with the needs of the people and the staff team.

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 (supplementary report published 26 September 2022) and there was a breach of regulation. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

This inspection was carried out to follow up on action we told the provider to take at the last inspection. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe 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. This is based on the findings at this inspection

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.