Archived: Hospice at Home

Hospice at Home is based at St Luke’s Hospice and provides adult palliative care and specialist care. The service supports individuals in their wish to be cared for at home, facilitates rapid discharge from hospital and avoids unwanted hospital admission. At the time of our inspection, 34 people were accessing the service.

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

People received exceptionally good palliative and end of life care and practical support, advice and emotional care from a dedicated staff team who were well trained and placed people and their families at the heart of the service. This support was also extended to people’s families.

People and relatives were extremely complimentary about the service. People and relatives thought of their carers as being like family members and told us they were highly compassionate and caring and treated them with the utmost respect.

Staff were highly motivated, felt valued and enjoyed working at the service. They were passionate about providing outstanding person-centred care to people when they needed it. A holistic approach was taken to assessing, planning and delivering care and support. People were fully involved in how their care was to be provided.

The service had forged strong links with other professionals and worked collaboratively with them to ensure people’s needs were met in a timely way and to ensure continuous improvements in end of life care. Feedback received from professionals was exceptional. One professional said, “The service is outstanding, demonstrating commendable resilience, responsiveness and commitment to all service users, patients, carers, families, and bereaved people, but also to St Luke’s as a partner organisation. The team, from managers to admin support to nurses and carers, are genuine and dedicated. They show high levels of empathy, courage and caring in the face of a difficult and often emotive job/service.”

Staff were safely recruited and well trained. The service had a rapid response team to enable them to respond quickly to any deterioration in people’s health.

People were supported safely, and risks regarding their care were assessed and managed. Staff were aware of how to report any concerns about neglect or abuse and were confident they would be addressed.

Where required people were supported to take their medicines by staff who had been trained and assessed as competent.

Senior management were praised by staff, professionals and people receiving a service for their commitment and passion for care. The service’s visions and values were fully embraced by staff and senior management promoted a culture which was open and inclusive. Staff were aware of their roles and responsibilities and told us and they felt listened to. They also said the management team were caring and supportive.

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.

Effective systems were in place to monitor and respond to any concerns.

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

Rating at last inspection

This service was registered with us on 17/08/2018 and this is the first inspection.

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.