Updated 29 February 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 checked whether the provider was 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.
The inspection took place on 4 January 2016 and was announced. A second day of the inspection took place on 05 January 2016 in order to gather additional information. The provider was given 48 hours’ notice of our intention to inspect the service. This is in line with our current methodology for inspecting domiciliary care agencies.
The inspection was undertaken by two adult social care inspectors and an expert-by-experience. An expert-by-experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of service, in this case of people requiring domiciliary / rehabilitative care.
Before the inspection the provider completed a Provider Information Return (PIR) which we reviewed in order to prepare for the inspection. This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about Warrington Borough Council’s Intermediate Care at Home service. We also looked at all the information which the Care Quality Commission already held on the provider. This included previous inspections and any information the provider had to notify us about. We also invited the local authority’s contract monitoring team to provide us with any information they held about the service. We took any information provided to us into account.
During the site visit we spoke with the registered manager of the Intermediate Care at Home service, two deputy managers and 10 care assistants.
We also contacted 19 people who used the service and five relatives by telephone and undertook home visits by invitation to speak with two more service users. Prior to the inspection we sent surveys to an additional 45 people who used the service; 45 relatives and 27 health care professionals to seek more feedback on the service. Nine questionnaires were received from people using the service, one from a relative and three from community professionals. Overall feedback was positive however only 56% of the respondents were of the view that staff arrived on time.
We looked at a range of records including eight care files belonging to people who used the service. This process is called pathway tracking and enables us to judge how well the service understand and plan to meet people’s care needs and manage any risks to people’s health and well-being. Examples of other records viewed included; policies and procedures; four staff files; minutes of meetings; complaint and safeguarding records; rotas and / or visit schedules; staff training and audit documentation.