We spoke with seven staff members which included the training manager and the operations manager.
Training, supervision and team meetings had taken place and staff confirmed this. The training manager told us that training would continue to take place at a location near to where the staff work following the relocation of Ark to Sheffield.
We reviewed care records, medication management, recruitment records and quality monitoring information, as these were outstanding from the previous visit. We found improvements in all four areas and found the agency to be compliant on these regulations. However, whilst reviewing quality monitoring records we also noted that the agency's staff had not all had an appraisal within the last year, and some were overdue for supervision and refresher training. Therefore a new compliance action has been made.
Following this December 2013 visit an Expert by Experience contacted six people by telephone and asked them what they thought about this service. The majority of comments were positive and included "I am happy with the service" and "Nothing is a problem for them." Responses on the overall quality of the service were also positive and included "Good" and "Fairly good."
We found improvements had been made on all the areas we reviewed, though further work was needed.
We asked people about the care they received from Ark and the comments were all positive. We were told that people felt involved in their own care, though not everyone remembered having a care plan, and when we checked care records, some were not up to date. People said they felt safe in the hands of staff from Ark. People were satisfied with how their medicines were administered, though we found shortfalls when we looked at people's medicine records.
We found some more work was needed by the agency on monitoring the overall quality of the service, though comments on the quality of the service from people who used Ark Molesey ranged from "Pretty good" to "Excellent."