The Service

Our service

Our service is designed to enable service users to enjoy the independence of their own homes by providing high quality care delivered by well trained, caring, friendly staff  which conforms to specification.

The Service Provided

• We deliver care and support to people at home. Our carers help with those things, which you or those around you find difficult.

• Personal care, including getting out of bed, dressing, washing and feeding etc

and / or

• Providing general domestic support, including housework, cooking, and essential day to day activities.

• We also provide support to facilitate and accompany service users to maintain an active independent lifestyle, including: collecting pensions, prescriptions, paying bills, arranging tradesmen and maintaining a safe environment etc

Our staff have experience in helping most people:

• Those suffering from a medical crisis, after an operation or illness.
• Someone who is disabled
• Those who have just had a baby.
• We deliver both day and night care from 1 to 24 hour intensive packages as well as companion care.
• The office is open Monday to Saturday; Tel: 01823 668400. A supervisor and care assistant are available “on call” to cover emergency situations seven days a week between 7.00 a.m. and 10.00 p.m. Telephone support and a message taking facility is available 24 hours a day 7 days a week at Netherclay House. Tel: 01823 284127

Netherclay Home Care Ltd prides itself on delivering a reliable service, which is responsive to service user’s needs and conforms to the required standards.

We are committed to:

• Affording every service user courtesy, respect and privacy.
• Providing individualised care based on the service user’s needs
• Involving residents, family and friends in developing an individualised care plan where this is appropriate.
• Ensuring the right of every service user to independence and choice.
• Responding to the views of our service users, their family and friends to enable us to continually improve our service.
• Delivering high quality care to all service users regardless of ethnic origin, religious or sexual orientation
• Maintaining service users, family and friends well informed in order to allow them to make informed choices.
• Evaluating care on a regular basis in order to assess its effectiveness and ensure a service user’s needs are being met.
• Providing staff with up to date training and support.
• Investing to improve standards.

Sitting Service

The sitting service is a service provided to give main carers a break. It is designed to be flexible and available in emergency situations. The visits can be between 2hrs and 8hrs long. The available hours are between 8am and 11pm. The carers are trained specifically for this role.

Supporting People Services

Home Support is a service that provides fully trained and experienced support workers who will work alongside people on specific tasks that will enable them to live independently within the community.

A comprehensive, individually tailored package of housing related support will be provided to enable a person to develop the skills they need to maintain their independence and to manage and run their own home.

Additionally, support workers may assist people with a physical disability or sensory loss to participate in an activity of their choice from a range of mainstream educational, leisure and social opportunities offered in their local community.

Support is designed to assist service users with the running and maintenance of their home. There is a real emphasis on empowerment and support workers will be committed to 'doing with' rather than 'doing for' the service user.

Children & Families Services

We provide personal, domestic and social care for children and their families who have physical, emotional and learning difficulties within their home environment.

Supported service users - What to expect

A Social Worker will carry out a needs assessment and contact a home care agency to deliver the required care. The Social Worker will let you know how much care you need and the number of visits a day or week you should receive, and the amount you will have to contribute to your care. The Social Worker will contact us and make the necessary arrangements.

Our Homecare Manager will telephone to introduce ourselves and let you know who is coming and the time of the first visit.

Either before your first visit or in the first couple of days following the arrangement of your care package one of our Senior Care Assistants will make an appointment to come and see you. They will carry out what is called a “ Risk Assessment” of your home and a manual handling assessment. These two assessments are intended to protect the health & safety of both yourself and the carers.

Netherclay Home Care will then, in liaison with you, the Social Worker and any relatives or friends you want to involve, develop a  “service user plan”. The “service user plan” will be reassessed at regular intervals in order to ensure that the support delivered continues to meet your needs.

A day-to-day record is kept in the service user’s house, while a care plan is kept in the office and service user's house. Details of the “risk assessment” and manual handling assessment are kept in your file in the office.

Our Senior Care Assistants will make an appointment to come and see you twice a year, to talk to you and any relatives or friends you would like to include, about the quality of care you receive.

Our office team will be in regular telephone contact. You are welcome talk to them at anytime about the service you receive.

The Social Service department and the Commission of Social Care Inspection may also carry out satisfaction surveys as part of their process and procedures, independently from Netherclay Home Care.

Private service users

For those paying for the entire cost of their care the process is very similar; the main difference being that once you have made contact with us we will make an appointment to carry out a needs assessment.

We will provide you with our Terms of Agreement, price list and “ Service User’s Guide”

Financial Arrangements

Supported service users

The Social Worker will tell you the amount you have to contribute to your care.

You can either send a cheque in the post, pay by standing order or your carer will collect your contribution weekly or monthly.  They will sign your care record to show how much they have collected. 

Private service users

We will invoice you monthly in arrears. Your invoice will show the weeks you received care, the amount of care your received and the cost.

Quality Control

Netherclay Home Care monitors and ensures quality in two main ways; an internal quality assurance system and procedures and external control.

Internal Quality monitoring

• The quality of the service is measured through audits carried out at regular intervals. This involves periodic measurement of what we do or what other people say we do against an ideal set of performance indicators.
• We keep a complaints log
• We maintain a day book
• We keep an accident book for both service users and staff.

External Quality Monitoring

• Feedback from service users, carers & others, including Social Workers,
• Quarterly quality assurance meetings with the Social Service Department. Social Services also carry out random customer satisfaction surveys.
• Reviews carried out by the Social Work team.
• Customer satisfaction surveys
• Inspections carried out by The Commission of Social Care Inspection
• We were recognised as an Investor in People in September 2002. This national award Investors in People in September 2002. This national quality award assesses our performance in terms of staff recruitment, training & development and communication

Complaints, Feedback or General Comments, both Positive and Negative.

Netherclay Home Care is committed to providing good quality services. We try very hard to make sure service users are treated fairly and efficiently. But we are all human and sometimes things may go wrong. If they do we would like to know.

For example:

• We have done something wrong
• We haven’t done something we should have done
• We have not treated you in a caring, professional manner.

We are very keen to receive your feedback and comments.  It is from your comments and feedback that we are able to continuously improves our service.  We value both positive and negative comments.

Our promise:

• We will take all complaints seriously
• We will investigate them thoroughly
• We will inform the complainant about the outcome of our investigations.
• If we have made a mistake we will put it right.
• We will keep a record of your complaint.

How To Complain

If you are not satisfied with our service you should complain,  in the first instance,  to :

• The Home Care Manager

Once your complaint has been received it will be investigated and you should receive an answer within one week.