Background to this inspection
Updated
20 July 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.
This inspection took place on the 21 June 2016 and was announced. The provider was given 48 hours’ notice because the location provides a domiciliary care service where people in the office may not be in the office during the day; we needed to be sure that someone would be in.
This inspection was carried out by one inspector.
Before we carried out our inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service. This would include statutory notifications that had been sent to us in the last year. This is information about important events which the provider is required to send us by law. We would use this information to plan what areas we were going to focus on during our inspection.
We spoke with seven people who used the service both prior to our visit on the telephone and following our visit. We also spoke with people during our visit to people’s homes alongside staff. We spoke with three staff, one of the two coordinators employed, the compliance manager and the audits assistant.
We reviewed six care and support plans, medication administration records, three staff recruitment files, staff training records and records relating to the quality and safety monitoring of the service.
Updated
20 July 2016
This inspection took place on the 21 June 2016 and was announced.
Nurse Plus and Carer Plus (UK) Limited is registered to provide personal care and nursing care to people living within the community. At the time of this inspection nursing care was not being provided to people in their own homes. There were 18 people receiving personal care from the service.
The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). 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.
We received positive feedback from the majority of people we spoke with who used the service and their relatives. People told us they were supported by regular staff who provided consistency of care and they were treated with dignity and respect with no concerns about their safety. Everyone we spoke with expressed their satisfaction with the way the service was managed and the care and support provided by staff.
Care and support plans provided staff with detailed guidance to enable them to support people according to their assessed needs. People’s wishes, choices and preferences about how their care was delivered were outlined and people told us staff respected their wishes.
People’s likelihood of harm was reduced because risks to people’s health, welfare and safety had been assessed and risk assessments produced which guided staff in how to mitigate these risks and keep people safe from harm. However, support plans including risk assessments in relation to the management of people’s medicines were not always sufficiently detailed or accurate.
The provider’s recruitment procedures demonstrated that they operated a safe and effective recruitment system. This meant that people could be assured action had been taken to check that newly appointed staff had the necessary skills and had been assessed as safe to provide their care and support.
There were enough qualified, skilled and experienced staff to meet people’s needs. People received care from a staff team that treated them with kindness and were mindful of protecting their rights to choice, dignity and respect.
Staff were supported with a planned induction and ongoing training opportunities. However, access to regular team meetings was sporadic.
The culture of the service was open, transparent and focused on the needs of people who used the service. Staff were supported by the management team who they described as hands on, supportive and approachable. The provider had systems in place to enable staff to access advice and emergency support out of hours.
People found the management team responded promptly to any concerns. People were provided with opportunities to express their views regarding the quality of the service, through satisfaction surveys and regular visits from coordinators to review of their care.
The provider had quality assurance monitoring process and systems in place to monitor the quality and safety of the care provided.