This inspection took place on the 25 February and 7 March 2016 and was announced. This domiciliary care service currently supports two people.
There was a registered manager. 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.
The safety of people who used the service was of the upmost concern of the owner of the service, registered manager and staff. Prior to providing support an in-depth assessment was completed to determine the service could meet the persons needs The staff were aware of their responsibility to protect people’s health and wellbeing. There were processes in place to ensure people’s safety, including risk assessments with guidance for staff with actions to take to safeguard people from the risk of harm. These identified how the risks to people’s safety were minimised and ensured people’s human rights to choice and freedom were safeguarded. All staff had received safeguarding training.
Staff had completed training in order that they could prompt and administer medicines. Staff supported people in the community as well as in their own homes. In order to pursue their interests in the community. Staff ensured that people had their medicines with them so they could take them at the prescribed times and also medicines they took which were to be used in an emergency. There were policies and procedures in place of which staff were confident to use to support the person, should the need arise.
There were sufficient numbers of staff employed to provide care and support according to people’s assessed needs. There was a robust recruitment process and staff were given supervision to develop their skills. The staff had received training as part of the induction and were further updated with refresher training so they were able to understand and meet people’s individual needs. There was a consistent team of staff working with each individual.
People and or their representatives, were involved in planning and making decisions about the support. The care plans were person-centred and contained information about how the staff were to support people to achieve agreed goals. The service was flexible and responded positively to people’s requests about their care, how it should be provided and could be changed at short-notice to reflect people’s choices on a particular day.
The service was committed to providing personalised care and ensured that people who used the service were consulted about how they lived their everyday lives. There was a complaints policy and procedure in place.
The owner of the service supported by the manager had begun to develop this new organisation in line with the statement of purpose to support and enabled people to live as full a life as possible according to their choices, wishes and preferences. The management team provided effective leadership to the service and enabled people and their representatives to express their views through regular planned care reviews.