Archived: Help at Home (Waterside Court)

Help at Home (Waterside Court) is a domiciliary care/extra care housing service providing personal care to older and younger adults with needs relating to dementia, mental health, physical disability, and sensory impairment.

People using the service live in a large modern building with 62 flats. 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 our inspection visit there were 40 people receiving personal care at the service.

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

Prior to our inspection we received information of concern about the service from people and staff. In response the provider put a new management team in place and significant improvements were made.

People said the quality of the care was much better, and well-trained, caring staff were in post. A person said, “I love it here now. It’s a different place. The manager and the staff are fantastic and so kind.” A relative said, “The staff have worked so hard to bring this place up to scratch.”

Staff had confidence in the way the service was being managed and said any concerns they had were addressed. A care worker said, “I think this is the nicest place you could send someone, I feel I trust all the staff, and would let a relative come here.”

Although some improvements were needed to written risk assessments, staff understood people’s needs and how to keep them safe. A care worker said, “There are a lot of caring staff here and I’ve never seen poor care, but if I did, I’d tell the manager and they’d deal with it.”

Staff sought people’s views on the service, listened to what they said, and made changes and improvements. For example, new activities, events and meetings were introduced to give people the opportunity to socialise if they wanted to.

The cultures of the service, staffing levels, call times, and medicines management had improved, and audits introduced to ensure staff provided people with good-quality care and support. People and staff said the manager was approachable and were confident they would address any concerns raised.

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 under the previous provider was Requires Improvement (published 07/02/2020).

Why we inspected

The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received around poor leadership and governance, staffing and medicines. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.

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. The overall rating for the service has changed from Requires Improvement to Good. This is based on the findings at this inspection.

We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the Safe key question. We look at this in all inspections even if no concerns or risks have been identified. This is to provide assurance that the service can respond to coronavirus and other infection outbreaks effectively.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Help at Home (Waterside Court) on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our reinspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.