QUALITY ASSURED

"All the carers that we have met are always polite and include Brian in the conversation. Special praise for Janet who is extremely caring and takes the trouble to cheer Brian up if his mood is low, and contacts us with any problems."

SERVICE QUALITY

We make every effort to provide you with person-centred quality care, delivered by a fully-trained and supported care team.  Moreover, we try to exceed national minimum standards, and to continually improve our service.

You have probably heard of “Investors in People”, which we have subscribed to for many years.  We are also accredited with ISO 9001, the International Standards Organisation.

To keep up-to-date locally, we are on the executive of the HDCP (the Hampshire Domiciliary Care Providers’ organisation), and we are a preferred provider for Portsmouth PO5.

All the above, plus a clear, transparent and positive business structure, helps us keep up-to-date with legislation, guidance and best practice.  Keeping in touch with trends and planning for the future is also very important.  

We constantly review our policies, procedures and best practices in a process called Quality Auditing. Regular senior team meetings evaluate and agree our systems, policies and processes, and decide whether there is a need for change.  We then make sure that everyone in the organisation, or touched by the organisation (i.e. the “stakeholders”), is kept informed.

Our Questionnaire

To keep our company dynamic in the way described requires information and feedback (good and bad!).  It helps us enormously if you would complete our performance quality questionnaire, which we send out every six months.

We would be very grateful if you could take the time to fill them in, and comment on our service; then, either return it to the coordinator in the envelope provided, or ask your care worker to hand it in to the office.

Also, unannounced spot checks are regularly carried out on our care workers by one of their managers to ensure you continue to receive a high quality service in accordance with your care plan.

If you would like to discuss this with a manager please contact the office.

If there is anything else that you wish to know about the service, please do not hesitate to contact the coordinator on 02392 752910.

It is Company policy to re-assess service users if requested to by a care worker or family member; we will also carry out service user reviews periodically in line with our quality assurance process.

Anyway, we hope we can assist, support and care for your needs with our continually improving, quality service.

OUR CARE PROMISES

(Please note:  it’s easy to talk about beliefs, mission statements, philosophies of care, etc. By promising, we seriously undertake to do these things, and if we fail, to seriously address putting the matter right, by listening to you, for example.)

Our aim is to provide safe, high quality domiciliary care (i.e. care in our clients’ homes in the community) to all client groups, mainly in the City of Portsmouth and surrounding areas, and:

  • To place the rights of service users at the forefront of our thinking.
  • To encourage our service users to take well-assessed risks, and exercise their rights to the full.
  • To seek to minimise intrusion and protect confidentiality, since help with personal tasks can be intrusive, and invades people’s personal space.
  • To support our service users in their choice of lifestyle and occupation, as we believe this is the best way to maintain independence and autonomy.
  • To involve our service users and/or their representatives in all decisions affecting their lives, including: improving their individual circumstances, how to achieve their goals, developing new skills and knowledge and the community care services available. If you wish, someone can speak on your behalf.
  • To respect the dignity, privacy, confidentiality and independence of our service users at all times, and to support them in expressing their racial, ethnic and cultural heritage.
  • To operate a policy of equal opportunity and equal access to all services, and not to discriminate with regard to age, disability, gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or culture.
  • To provide up-to-date information about domiciliary care services. Service Users will be given a comprehensive information pack either at the assessment stage or at the time of the first visit.  The information pack contains a summary of the services available, how they operate, the costs involved and exactly what these costs cover.   The company may be able to offer information about other services available in your area, and about other sources of help such as funding for care.
  • To protect your personal information.
  • To treat our service users in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act (2005), where applicable.
  • To point out the availability of full versions of all our policies, eg on confidentiality, equal opportunities, etc.

The amount and type of care we provide is tailored to individual needs, and will be different for different people; however, our values remain constant, and underpin all the services we provide to everyone.

Please note that for legal reasons, we are obliged to point out that we regard our ‘Care Promises’ as comprising our Aims, Objectives, Philosophy of Care and Service Users’ Rights Policy Statement. Fuller versions of these and other policies mentioned here or elsewhere are available.