Home Instead Stourbridge

Updated 2 May 2019

The inspection:

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked 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.

Inspection team:

The inspection team consisted of one adult social care inspector from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and an expert by experience. An expert by experience is someone who has personal experience of using, or caring for someone in a service similar to Home Instead Stourbridge. Their role was to undertake telephone calls with people who used the service and their relatives, to ask them about the service they received.

Service and service type:

Home Instead Stourbridge is a domiciliary care service and people receive care and support in their own homes, allowing them to retain their own independence.

The service had a manager at the time of the inspection, who was appropriately registered with the CQC.

Notice of inspection:

The inspection was announced. We provided 48 hours’ notice (done on 26 February 2019) of the inspection to ensure it could be facilitated on this day. We spent a second day carrying out telephone calls with caregivers and this took place on 6 March 2019. This was to ask them about their experiences of working for the service.

What we did:

Prior to the inspection we reviewed information and evidence we already held about the service, which had been collected via our ongoing monitoring of care services. This included notifications sent to us by the service. Notifications are changes, events or incidents that the provider is legally obliged to send to us without delay. We also asked for feedback from the local authority and other professionals who worked closely with the service.

During the inspection we spoke with 10 people who used the service, five relatives and 12 caregivers. We also spoke with both directors of the service, one of whom was the registered manager and the care manager.

We reviewed three care plans, three caregiver personnel files, three medicine administration records (MAR) and other records about the management of the service to help inform our inspection judgements about the service.

Updated 2 May 2019

About the service:

Home Instead Stourbridge is a domiciliary care agency (DCA) registered to provide personal care and support to people in their own homes. The office is located in the Stourbridge area the West Midlands. The service is owned by Fiftytwo 7 Care Ltd, a franchise of Home Instead.

Rating at last inspection:

Our last inspection of Home Instead Stourbridge was in December 2015. The overall rating at this inspection was Good, with no regulatory breaches identified. This report was published in February 2016.

We undertook this announced inspection of Home Instead Stourbridge on 28 February 2019. We also completed telephone interviews with a number of caregivers and this was on 6 March 2019.

At the time of our inspection, 68 people were using the service. Of those 68 people, 35 received personal care and the remainder received help at home, or companionship services. We only looked at the service for people receiving personal care as this is the activity that is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

People’s experience of using this service at this inspection:

Staff of Home Instead Stourbridge are known as ‘caregivers’ and we have referred to them in this way for the purpose of this inspection report throughout.

People received an outstanding service. People who used the service and their relatives were extremely positive about the service they received.

We were told of numerous examples where caregivers had ‘gone the extra mile’ to ensure people received high quality, person centred care. Caregivers often went ‘above and beyond’ their expected job role so that people received an outstanding service.

Links within the local community were excellent and the service had won a number of awards, one of which was the ‘Best employers in Care 5 Star Award 2018’. This is awarded by the company Work Buzz who are market research experts across all sectors of business. They conduct annual independent surveys and the award is only given to the top few percent of businesses which they survey in a year. The service were also passionate about ways to raise money for charity and the team had already participated in a number of local events in order to meet this goal.

There was an exceptional open and inclusive culture. The service was extremely well led by a strong and supportive management team. All caregivers fully embraced the registered provider's visions and values to deliver a high quality person centred service, helping people to continue living in their own home, maintain their independence and lead happy and fulfilled lives. Caregivers consistently told us they felt the service leadership was outstanding. People who used the service also told us about the exceptional management within the service.

Caregivers were highly motivated, felt valued and enjoyed working at the service and the culture of the service was fully embraced by everyone. The management team actively encouraged caregivers to be involved in the continuous improvement of the service.

Positive relationships had been formed between caregivers and people using the service. Caregivers knew people well and were kind and sensitive to their needs, ensuring people's privacy and dignity was respected at all times. A ‘Matching’ process was used and this enabled people to receive care and support from caregivers with similar interests to themselves.

People and their relatives felt safe using the service. There were sufficient numbers of caregivers who had been safely recruited to meet people's needs. People were supported by a consistent care team and there had never been a missed visit at the service. People did not receive visits from caregivers who had not previously been introduced to them, unless there were exceptional circumstances.

Risks to people had been assessed and caregivers knew what to do to keep people safe from avoidable harm.

Where required, people were supported to take their medicines in a safe way by caregivers who had been trained and assessed as competent.

On-going training, supervision and observations of caregivers competence were undertaken to check they had the skills and knowledge to be competent in their job role and support people safely and effectively.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and caregivers supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

People's health was well managed. Caregivers had built positive links with professionals which promoted people's wellbeing.

More information is in detailed findings below.

Why we inspected:

This inspection was carried out to check if people using the services of Home Instead Stourbridge were still receiving a ‘Good’ level of care and support and to check that regulatory requirements were still being met.

Follow up:

We will continue to monitor information and intelligence we receive about the service to ensure good quality care is provided to people. We will return to re-inspect in line with our inspection timescales for ‘Outstanding’ rated services, however if any information of concern is received, we may inspect sooner.

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