Wight Home Care Limited

Updated 1 March 2023

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. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection was conducted by one inspector and one Expert by Experience [ExE]. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

Service and service type

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations.

At the time of our inspection there was not a registered manager in post. The provider had a temporary manager in post who we will refer to as ‘the manager' throughout this report. The provider had recruited a new manager who was going through an induction process and would be submitting an application to register with CQC.

Notice of inspection

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because we needed to be sure that the provider or manager would be in the office to support the inspection.

Inspection activity started on 11 January 2023 and ended on 20 January 2023 We visited the location’s office on 11 January 2023.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection, including our monitoring review of the service completed in October 2022, previous inspection reports and notifications. Notifications are information about specific important events the service is legally required to send to us. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with 14 people who used the service and 3 relatives about their experience of the care provided. We spoke with 7 members of staff including 2 directors, 1 of which was the nominated individual, the manager, and care staff. The nominated individual is responsible for supervising the management of the service.

We reviewed a range of records. This included eight people’s care records and medication records. We looked at three staff files in relation to recruitment. A variety of records relating to the management of the service, including quality assurance audits, training records, policies and procedures were reviewed.

Updated 1 March 2023

About the service

Wight Home Care Limited is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes in the community. It provides a service to older adults, people living with dementia, mental health impairments, physical disabilities, sensory impairment and younger adults. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided. At the time of our inspection there were 59 people receiving personal care from the service.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

People's care plans were up to date and contained person centred information. Risk assessments were completed for people which identified any risks, but these required further detail to ensure staff had the information they needed to mitigate risks. The provider took immediate action to make these improvements and staff demonstrated they knew people well and knew how to safely meet their needs.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. However, some improvements were needed to the records made in relation to this.

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. We considered this guidance as there were people using the service who have a learning disability and or who are autistic. The provider was meeting people’s needs in line with this guidance.

People were supported to be safe. There were systems and processes in place to ensure people were protected from the risks of avoidable harm. The provider had a policy and procedure for safeguarding adults and staff understood their responsibilities.

Staff had completed training in the safe administration of medicines and had their competency re-assessed annually or when needed. People were encouraged to maintain their independence to self-administer their own medicines, where possible. People who required support to administer medicines, were happy with how they were supported.

Staff had received appropriate training that equipped them to support people. Safe recruitment procedures were in place to help ensure only suitable staff were employed.

Staff felt they were supported by the management team and had regular contact to ensure they were informed of any important information or changes.

The management team had processes for monitoring visits and endeavoured to ensure that office staff contacted people when care staff were held up or were running late for visits.

Systems and processes were in place to monitor the service and identify and drive improvement. This included regular spot checks, audits and feedback surveys. The provider had developed an action plan to ensure they were able to identify and make any improvements needed in a timely way.

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

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published 27 April 2018).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has remained Good. This is based on the findings at this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Wight Home Care Limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.