Background to this inspection
Updated
10 April 2019
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. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
Inspection team:
The inspection team consisted of one inspector and an expert by experience. 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:
Mortimer & Co Limited t/a Bluebird Care (Ealing) is a domiciliary care agency that provides the regulated service of personal care in people’s own homes.
The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. 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.
Notice of inspection:
We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because we needed to be sure that the registered manager would be available.
Inspection site visit activity started on 14 February and continued the 15 February 2019.We visited the office location to meet the registered manager and office staff and to review care records. The expert by experience made phone calls to people and their relatives on the 19 February 2019.
What we did:
Following the last inspection, we reviewed the action plan the provider sent us to address the shortfalls found at the last inspection by 31 July 2018. Prior to the inspection we also reviewed information, including notifications we had received about the service since the last inspection. Notifications are about incidents and events the provider must notify us about by law, such as allegations of abuse. The registered manager completed a Provider Information Return (PIR) on the 9 February 2019. This is a form that asks providers to give us some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.
During the inspection we looked at the care records of five people, and a sample of people’s medicines records. We reviewed three staff files. This included staff recruitment and training records. We spoke with the registered manager and the director who was also the owner of the agency, the co-ordinator, and the live-in coordinator, the recruitment manager, the training manager and the events and marketing manager. We also spoke with four care staff. Following our site visit we spoke with five people using the service and nine relatives.
Updated
10 April 2019
About the service:
• Mortimer & Co Limited t/a Bluebird Care (Ealing) is a domiciliary care agency that provides the regulated service of personal care in people’s own homes. They were providing this service to 65 people at the time of our inspection and 9 of those people had a live-in care worker.
• Not everyone using Mortimer & Co Limited t/a Bluebird Care (Ealing) receives regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided.
People’s experience of using this service:
• People and relatives spoke positively about their permanent care workers finding them caring and reliable. A few relatives found that staff who covered when permanent care workers were not available were not so good. The registered manager was aware of those issues and was in the process of addressing these.
• People and relatives told us they felt safe with the service provided. We found that staff could recognise signs of abuse and knew how to report safeguarding adult concerns appropriately. The registered manager had a good oversight of safeguarding concerns, incidents and accidents and complaints. They analysed service trends to ensure errors or mistakes were not repeated and shared their learning with the management team.
• Medicines were administered safely and medicines administration records were audited monthly. People were supported to access appropriate health care and there was guidance in place to support staff to recognise the symptoms of ill health.
• The registered manager met with people and their relatives prior to offering a service to assess and develop an effective care plan. Risks to the person were identified and measures to minimise the risks were in place. Care plans were reviewed on a regular basis and in response to changing circumstances.
• Staff received an induction and ongoing training. They received supervision sessions to support their individual development and address practice issues and they told us they felt well supported by the provider.
• The registered manager and management team completed audits and checks to ensure the quality of the service provided. They contacted people and their relatives regularly to check they were happy with the care provided. They utilised the support of the Bluebird franchise support team to audit the services provided and offer advice at regular periods throughout the year.
Rating at last inspection: We previously inspected on the 23 and 27 November 2017. We found the rating to be requires improvement. This was because the provider was not meeting all their responsibilities under the Mental Capacity Act 2005. At this inspection we found they had acted to address this concern.
Why we inspected: This was a planned comprehensive inspection based on previous rating of requires improvement.
Follow up: We will continue to monitor and inspect in line with our ratings protocol.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk