Updated 7 February 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:
One inspector carried out the inspection on 10 and 15 January 2019.
Service and service type:
Creative Support – Slough Services is a domiciliary care agency. This service 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 rented and is the occupant’s 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.
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 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care. We needed to be sure that they would be in.
What we did:
Our inspection was informed by evidence we already held about the service. We also checked for feedback we received from members of the public, local authorities and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). We checked records held by Companies House and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).
We did not ask the service 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.
Our inspection activity started on 8 January 2018 and ended on the 18 January 2018. We visited both extra care housing locations on 11 and 15 of January 2018.
We telephoned and spoke with three relatives. During the inspection site visit we spoke with six people who used the service and one visiting relative. The use of observations to gain an understanding of staff interactions and the care people received was limited due to the type of service. However, we were able to observe short interactions and engagement of two care workers and the registered home manager with people using the service.
We spoke with seven members of staff, including care workers, the team leader, the registered manager, the area manager and the service director. We also received feedback from the local authority and four other health and social care professionals.
We reviewed a range of records. These included four people's care records and two medicines records for the preceding week. We looked at three staff recruitment files and all agency care worker profiles and induction records. We also checked four weeks of staff rotas, accident and incident reports and records used to measure the quality of the service such as manager checks and provider audits. The provider sent us further information after the inspection site visits about monitoring systems, policies and procedures and the staff training and supervision matrix.