Updated 18 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:
This inspection was carried out by 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. Their areas of expertise are in older people and dementia care.
Service and service type: Carewatch (Colebrook House) provides care and support to people living in specialist ‘extra care’ housing. Extra care housing is purpose-built or adapted single household accommodation in a shared site or building. The accommodation is bought or rented, and is the occupants’ own home. People’s care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for extra care housing; this inspection looked at people’s personal care and support service.
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:
This inspection was announced. We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because we needed to be sure that the registered manager would be in.
Inspection site visit activity started on 20 February 2019 and ended on 21 February 2019. We visited the office location on both days to see the registered manager, office and care staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures. We also spoke with people using the service.
What we did:
Before the inspection we looked at all the information we had about the service. This information included statutory notifications that the provider had sent to CQC. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to send us by law. Due to technical problems, the provider was not able to complete a Provider Information Return. This is information we require providers to send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We took this into account when we inspected the service and made the judgement in this report. We also sought feedback from the local authority that commissioned the service and other health and social care professionals. We used all this information to plan our inspection.
During the inspection, we spoke with 12 people and ten relatives to gather their views about the service. We spoke with the registered manager, a scheme manager, a quality service improvement manager, a quality officer and eight care staff. We reviewed eight care plans, risk assessments and medicines records. We reviewed ten staff files including staff recruitment, training and supervision records. We also looked at records used in managing the service including policies and procedures, accidents and incident records, complaints, staff rotas, call bell logs, audits and quality assurance reports, surveys and minutes of meetings.