Archived: Derby Senior Care Limited

Updated 8 April 2016

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

We inspected the service on 7 March 2016. The provider was given two days’ notice because the location provides a domiciliary care service and we wanted to make sure people and staff were available to speak with us.

We used a range of different methods to help us understand people’s experience. We made telephone calls to five people and relatives in their homes and spoke with five staff and the registered manager and provider. We sent out questionnaires to people to ask them about the quality of the service they received. We used this information to make a judgement about the service.

The provider completed a provider information return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. As part of our planning we reviewed the information in the PIR and information we held about the service. This included statutory notifications the registered manager had sent us and information received from people that used the service. A statutory notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send to us by law.

We looked at five people’s care records to see if their records were accurate and up to date. We also looked at records relating to the management of the service including quality checks.

Updated 8 April 2016

We inspected the service on 7 March 2016. Derby Senior Care provides a care and support service to people who live in their own homes. This is a small service and at the time of our inspection 23 people were receiving personal care and support. The organisation provides other support that is not regulated by us which includes personal shopping, support in the community and respite breaks for carers.

The service had a registered manager in place at the time of our inspection. 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.

Staff sought people’s consent before they provided care and support. Some people did not have capacity to make certain decisions. It was not clear how some decisions had been made and whether people should make the decision for themselves.

Staff knew how to keep people safe and understood their responsibilities to protect people from the risk of abuse. Risks to people’s health and welfare had been identified and staff knew how to support people to ensure risks were minimised. Each person was supported by a small team of staff who knew people well. People had developed good relationships with staff who recognised where care needed to be reviewed to reflect changes with people’s support.

People were supported by staff who had the knowledge and skills to provide safe and appropriate care and support. Staff felt confident that they had the necessary skills to provide safe and effective support for people. People had support to take their medicines at the right time and staff knew how to act if medicines were missed.

People were involved in the planning and reviewing of their care and making decisions about what care they wanted. People were treated with dignity and respect by staff who understood the importance of this. People received the assistance they required to have enough to eat and drink and were supported to maintain with people that were important to them.

People were involved in giving their views on how the service was run through the systems used to monitor the quality of the service. The manager assessed how well the service was running to identify if any improvements were needed.

People felt comfortable raising any issues or concerns and there were arrangements in place to deal with people's complaints.

You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report