23 and 24 January 2015
During a routine inspection
This inspection took place on 23 and 24 January 2015. We last inspected the Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity in November 2013. At that inspection we found the service was meeting all the regulations that we assessed.
Rainbow Trust Children's Charity (RTCC) is a national organisation. It provides emotional and practical support to children who have life threatening or terminal illnesses within family homes.
The service had a registered manager in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
Parents we spoke with told us that they had confidence in the family support staff to keep their children safe and secure and they had confidence in the support worker’s skills and abilities.
Care plans were in place detailing how those using the service wished to be supported. We saw that families were very involved in making decisions about care and the support needed. Everyone we spoke with who used or came into contact with the service on a professional level had only positive things to say about the rainbow trust Children’s Charity. People praised the “professionalism” of staff and the way the service involved those who used it in all aspects of the service provision.
Safe systems were in place for the recruitment of new staff and for the induction and on going training and development of staff working there. We found that support staff were well supported to undertake regular training relevant to their roles. They were very knowledgeable about their responsibilities to keep people safe and to maintain their confidentiality.
We saw that the caseloads of family support staff were well monitored to prevent them becoming too large and thereby risk affecting the high level of individual care being provided. The caseload was subject to a monthly review by the support workers with the registered manager to make sure support staff could provide individualised care and be responsive to changing needs.
The manager set high standards and was accessible to all those who used the service and to the support staff who told us the manager was “really good”. Families we spoke with who used the service had confidence in the registered manager and felt confident to make suggestions about service provision and put forward ideas and raise any concerns with them.
A wide range of appropriate health and social care services had been included in assessing needs planning and implementing care and accessing support for families with frequent multi-agency meetings taking place. We saw that families needs and preferences were at the centre of all assessments and care planning. Consent was obtained to make any referrals to other professionals or to share relevant information.