Crisis North

Crisis North is a domiciliary care service providing personal care. The service provides short-term support to assess people’s needs to prevent hospital admissions, discharge people from hospital or following crisis situations. The service provides support to people with a range of needs, at the time of our inspection, they were mostly supporting older people, people with physical disabilities and people with mental health needs. The service works across North and West Lancashire. At the time of our inspection there were 44 people using the service.

Not everyone who used the service received personal care. The Care Quality Commission (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.

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

People felt safe with the support they received from care staff. Staff had received training in safeguarding and knew how to respond to manage risks to people. People received their medicines as prescribed. Improvements were needed to medicines systems to support their safe use.

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.

Staff and people worked together to assess and plan people’s care and support. People’s care records were not always detailed and did not always reflect people’s involvement. We made a recommendation about this. People were supported by staff who had training to support them. We made a recommendation about staff training.

At the time of the inspection, the location did not provide care or support for anyone with a learning disability or an autistic person. However, we assessed the care provision under Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, as it is registered as a specialist service for this population group.

Feedback from people and their relatives consistently demonstrate staff had a kind, caring approach to providing their support. People felt their needs were understood by staff, who encouraged them to gain confidence and independence.

People’s care was designed to help them achieve their aims and goals. People and their relatives had opportunities to provide feedback on the service.

The provider had quality assurance systems in place and had identified some areas for improvement. These systems were not fully developed or embedded to support the delivery of high-quality care. We have made a recommendation about this.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Rating at last inspection

This service was registered with us on 10 May 2021 and this is the first inspection.

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

Recommendations

We have made recommendations about people’s care and support records and their access to these, staff training and the provider’s quality assurance systems.

Follow up

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