River Garden Care

Updated 6 January 2021

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. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection team consisted of one inspector and two Experts by Experience (ExE) who made phone calls to people and their relatives. An ExE is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service. The ExEs had experience working with older people.

Service and service type

River Garden Care is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats.

Notice of inspection

This inspection was announced. We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because we needed to be sure that the provider or registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection.

Inspection site visit activity took place on 19 November 2020. We visited the office location to see the manager and office staff and to review care and management records.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we held about the service which included notifications of events and incidents at the service. The provider was not asked to complete a provider information return prior to this inspection. This is information we require providers to send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We took this into account when we inspected the service and made the judgements in this report.

During inspection

We spoke with eight people, 17 relatives, the nominated individual, registered manager, one senior care worker, two care coordinators and a training and recruitment officer. We looked at four care files, seven people’s medication administration record sheets, four staff files, quality assurance reports and other records relating to the management of the service including incidents and accidents records.

After the inspection

We spoke with four care staff and we continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence found. We looked at training data and quality assurance records.

Updated 6 January 2021

About the service

River Garden Care is a domiciliary care agency registered to provide personal care to people in their own homes. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. 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. At the time of our inspection about 70 people were receiving personal care from the service.

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

There were enough staff available to deliver care to people. There was an effective system in place for planning and monitoring care visits. People received their medicines safely. Staff had received training in safeguarding adults and knew actions to take to protect people from abuse. Risks to people were managed effectively to reduce harm to them. Lessons were learned from incidents and accidents. Staff followed infection control procedures to reduce risks of infection.

People and their relatives knew how to contact the office if they had concerns or complaints. The registered manager and members of the management team shared information with people about the service. There were effective systems in place to assess and monitor the quality of the service. The provider worked in partnership with other organisations to develop the service. The registered manager met their statutory responsibilities to the CQC.

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

Rating at last inspection (and update): The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 30 July 2019) and there we found two breaches of regulation. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating. We carried out a focused inspection to check they had followed their action plan and to confirm they now met legal requirements in the areas we had concerns at our last inspection. This report only covers our findings in relation to the key questions safe and well-led which contain those requirements.

The ratings from the previous comprehensive inspection for those key questions not looked at on this occasion were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection. The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good. This is based on the findings at this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for River Garden Care on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.