Kensington Home Care

On this page

• Overview
• Person-centred Care
• Care provision, Integration and continuity
• Providing Information
• Listening to and involving people
• Equity in access
• Equity in experiences and outcomes
• Planning for the future

Care planning put people's needs at the centre of how care was planned and delivered. Staff understood the health and care needs of people and responded well to involve external professionals when needed. People were supported to access care in ways that met their personal circumstances.

This service scored 71 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

People and their families confirmed they received the care they needed. There were instances were some people were frustrated by communication difficulties, whereby they felt staff were not able to communicate with them as well as they hoped, but for the majority of people, staff did understand how to support people in a way that was particular to them.

External health and social care professionals felt the service worked collaboratively with people (and with them as partners) to identify and meet people’s needs. One said, “It has been my experience that all the staff that I have worked alongside or communicated with have been proactive in resolving issues and extremely professional both when dealing with myself and service users.” The provider’s assessment and 6 month review process ensured that people’s needs could be understood and planned for. The system in place supported this. The provider was taking a pragmatic approach to moving across existing care plans onto their new electronic care planning system. Rather than rewrite all care plans they were attaching as a document.

People had limited experiences of how well joined up care was, as the majority of people had been with the service for less than a year.

The registered manager had formed a range of positive relationships with local partners and worked openly with them. This meant the service was outward looking and was in a good position to ask for help or advice from those local partners when, for example, good practice or legislation changes had an impact on how they needed to deliver people’s care. The service ensured they had relevant health information about people before beginning a package of care.

External health and social care professionals felt the service worked flexibly and responsively to ensure people’s changing needs were met by joined up working. One said, “Representatives of Kensington attended care providers forum and were open to the local authorities new ways of working with regards to single handed techniques and utilising equipment to mitigate additional care staff which promoting the independence of the client.”

Processes supported the joined up working by the service. Records were sufficiently detailed and reviewed regularly by the registered manager and care co-ordinator.

People felt they had the information they needed from the service when they chose to use them. Some people told us they did not always receive a rota on time and we have fed this back to the registered manager. This is also addressed in the Safe Staffing evidence category.

The service were able to provide policies such as complaints and safeguarding processes to people in other formats and could use a translation service if needed. The majority of people who used the service preferred face to face interactions and valued the provider’s comprehensive pre-assessment approach, where the visiting officer explained how the service worked.

Information was available in alternative formats when people needed them. The service had previously supported a person with no spoken English and produced a set of prompt cards (‘hello’, ‘medicines’, for example) in collaboration with relatives to help staff communicate and provide information.

People we spoke with knew how to make a complaint and, where they had done so, they confirmed the registered manager had taken action. People had the confidence to raise any issues.

The registered manager was reviewing their complaints policy to explore whether it could capture more useful information to use for learning. They also had drafted a range of service user surveys. They understood the need to listen to and act on people’s feedback. They were responsive to our sharing of CQC’s own feedback service, ‘Give Feedback on Care’. External partners provided positive feedback about how well the service listened to people’s changing needs or concerns and acted on them. One said, “On occasion I have had service users who haven’t got on with care staff that have been attending calls and have found that Kensington are quick to resolve these issues in the best interest of the service user and staff.” Another said of the registered manager’s response to a concern, “The provider completed a concise investigative report, made changes where necessary and informed us.”

6 monthly quality reviews ensured people had an opportunity to formally feedback to the service about how they felt things were going, and to formally review any needs they had. In the interim, leaders conducted spot checks of staff to ensure they were adhering to care plans.

People raised no concerns about accessing primary and secondary services, nor that the service put in place any barriers. They felt able to access relevant healthcare professionals when needed.

The registered manager, visiting officer and care co-ordinator were experienced and passionate about ensuring people received as fair a route as possible through the health and social care landscape. They did this by proactively flagging concerns as soon as they arose and working with partners.

Partners felt the registered manager proactively advocated for people who used the service, to ensure they had a voice and an input when it was necessary to seek support from external services. Staff had acted proactively to ensure one person’s cultural background and language did not prevent them from accessing the care they needed.

People did not raise any concerns about any impacts on their ability to access services. They felt, for the most part, the provider ensured it met people’s basic needs and acted on any major concerns or changes.

People felt able to speak up if they perceived poor care or poor outcomes. Most felt included in the care planning and review process.

Leaders at the service ensured a flexible approach in delivering care and care related information when one person needed the support of relatives and prompt cards to understand; the service did what it could to reduce any inequalities.

The registered manager had compiled surveys for people to complete. They planned to use these to inform how they could continually improve the service and support people to experience equity in accessing other services.

People told us they were involved in conversations about their future care planning as much as they wanted.

The Registered manager and other staff had not always explored people’s longer-term plans in terms of their care, particularly end of life care wishes. The registered manager acknowledged this was a difficult topic to broach but also that they needed to do more to sensitively explore this area of care as early as possible, and to help people and relatives engage in this conversation.

As per the Feedback from Staff and Leaders evidence category, the registered manager needed to find ways to broach questions of longer term planning around end of life care, where appropriate, with people who used the service.