'Outstanding' care provider stops live-in workers feeling isolated

The first three months of a live-in care worker’s job is critical to whether they stay or walk and it is Carefound Home Care (Wilmslow)’s efforts to stop care workers feeling isolated and alone that has contributed to care inspectors rating it outstanding.

Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have rated Carefound Home Care (Wilmslow) ‘outstanding’ in all five areas (safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led), following an inspection in August.

The 'big issue'

With half of the its clients receiving live-in care from care workers and the other half receiving one-hour visits, Oliver Stirk, director of Carefound Home Care, said: “If we are going to get turnover of staff it will happen in the first three months.

“We’ve identified this and assigned a mentor to support staff. A big issue in live-in care is care workers aren’t getting specialist support.”

Live-in care workers can spend long periods of time caring for someone in their home, and so the drive to keep the workforce happy and motivated has led to regular face-to-face contact with care workers by the management.

While many major live-in care organisations have one head office nationally, Carefound Home Care has instead two local branches - one based in Cheshire, the other in Harrogate.

Crucially, this benefits care workers because each office’s local management team makes it their business to visit live-in care workers every week in their clients' homes to give them support and guidance.

To address the ‘big issue’ of ‘specialist training’ for home care staff, the firm works with Parkinsons UK, Stroke Association, the Contented Dementia Trust among other organisations to develop specialist training for staff caring for those with specialist conditions such as motor neurone disease (MND) and dementia.

CQC inspectors highlighted “exceptionally well-trained staff” giving the “best possible care” to people with specialist health conditions. They described the service as having “exceptional and distinctive methods”.

The care watchdog said those receiving care and their families were “overwhelmingly positive" about the individualised care that was provided by the staff. Inspectors said staff “felt happy and supported in their roles” and “without exception staff spoke highly of the management team”.

Matching personalities

Carefound Home Care works with families of clients to match live-in care workers’ personalities and hobbies to those requiring live-in care.

Technology also plays a part in giving care workers a quick, effective means of communication with management. Inspectors highlighted the use of technology to collect clients’ health data, which helps care staff identify the risk of health incidents and avoid unnecessary admissions to hospital.

Carefound Home Care (Wilmslow) opened in 2017 and achieved its ‘outstanding’ rating in its first ever inspection. Its success is all the more remarkable as only three per cent of care providers in the UK have achieved a top rating.

The company's Harrogate office, founded in 2012, has received two consecutive ‘outstanding’ ratings from the CQC.

“We don’t believe we should get too big because then you water down the quality of the service. For our service, 60-75 clients is about right for each office”.

With nearly all of its clients either self-funding or funded by the NHS, Mr Stirk added: “If we had local authority contracts, we just couldn’t do it. In our opinion, a lot of local authorities simply aren‘t funding enough to provide the quality needed. Staff need to be paid properly etc.

“The health and social care system is facing huge challenges as the population ages and unmet care needs continue to rise. This report clearly demonstrates how highly personalised services like ours, working collaboratively with other parts of the system, are a vital part of the solution.”

To read Carefound Home Care (Wilmslow)’s ‘outstanding’ CQC report click here

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