Updated 17 April 2019
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. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
Inspection team:
¿ The inspection team consisted of two inspectors and two experts-by -experience. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service. They undertook telephone calls to gain feedback from people using the service and their relatives.
Service and service type:
¿ This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. It provides a service to predominately older people who may also be living with dementia, people who misuse drugs and alcohol, have mental health issues, or a learning disability or autistic spectrum disorder.
¿ Not everyone using Carewatch (Brighton) received the regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided. At the time of the inspection 177 people were using the service but only 167 people received support with personal care.
¿ The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.
Notice of inspection:
¿ We gave the service a weeks’ notice of the inspection visit. This was because we wanted to gain feedback from people using the service, which we used to inform the site visit. We also needed to be sure the management would be in the office. We visited the office on 26 February 2019 to see the registered manager, talk with care staff and to look at the records.
What we did:
¿ Before the inspection we reviewed the information, we held about the service and the service provider.
¿ The registered 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.
¿ We looked at the notifications we had received for this service. Notifications are information about important events the service is required to send us by law. We spoke with 21 people using the service and five relatives.
¿ We contacted the local authority and five health and social care professionals for their experience of the service provided. We received two responses.
• During the office site visit we looked at records.
This included:
¿ Four staff recruitment files
¿ Training records
¿ Eight people’s care records
¿ Records of accidents, incidents and complaints
¿ Audits and quality assurance reports
¿ We also spoke with the registered manager, the area manager, a quality manager, two quality
officers, a coordinator and eight care staff.