We carried out an inspection of Crossroads in East Lancashire on 30, 31 July and 3 August 2015. We gave the service 48 hours of our intention to carry out the inspection.
Crossroads in East Lancashire is registered to provide personal care to children and adults living in their own homes. It specialises in providing support to carers who care for a relative / friend and gives carers the opportunity to have some time for themselves and facilitates a break from their caring responsibilities. It provides a flexible 24 hour service around the needs of people supported and their main carers. At the time of the inspection 14 children and 155 adults were using the service.
The service was managed by 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.
We lasted inspected this service on 9 May 2013 and found it was meeting the regulations in force at the time.
During this inspection we found two breaches of the regulations related to recruitment of staff and the notification of incidents. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.
People using the service and their carers told us they were well cared for and felt safe with the staff who provided their support. Staff knew about safeguarding procedures and we saw that concerns had been reported appropriately to the local authority, which helped to keep people safe. We received notifications from the registered manager of previous safeguarding concerns following the inspection. Risks to people’s well-being were assessed and managed.
We found the arrangements for managing people’s medicines were safe. Records and appropriate policies and procedures were in place for the administration of medicines.
All staff spoken with had an awareness of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and had completed appropriate training.
Arrangements were in place to maintain appropriate staffing levels to make sure people received their contracted support. This included a computerised staff rota, which could be accessed remotely. There were systems in place to ensure all staff received regular training and supervision. New staff completed a comprehensive induction and undertook a probationary period of 26 weeks.
Staff knew the people they were supporting and provided them with a personalised service. People and their carers were actively involved in the development and review of their care plans. This meant people were able to influence the delivery of their care and staff had up to date information about people’s needs and wishes.
People told us they received care from a consistent group of staff. All people and carers spoken with made very complimentary comments about the staff and the service they provided. The agency had processes in place to match staff with people to ensure there was a compatible relationship.
The service was flexible and responded positively to people’s requests. Children and adults were supported by staff to access community facilities and pursue a wide variety of leisure activities. The staff had used creative ways to meet people’s aspirations. People said they greatly enjoyed their activities and told us being able to go out regularly made a positive difference to their lives. The agency also facilitated three weekly singing groups for people and their carers.
All people, their carers and staff spoken with had confidence in the registered manager and felt the agency had clear leadership. We found there were effective systems to assess and monitor the quality of the service, which included feedback from people using the service.