We inspected the community nursing services over five days and as part of the inspection we met with several community staff such as: health visitors, district nurses, school nurses, cardiology nurses, looked after children’s nurses and physiotherapists. We met staff both individually and in a group meeting to gain their views and experiences of working at the service. We visited the headquarters, inspected records and spoke with the management and governance teams.

We also looked at the 'Patient Opinion' website which is a place where people can give anonymous feedback on the service they have received. The website is an independent site about people’s experiences of UK health services, good or bad. We saw people had written positive comments about the service they received. Some of those comments have been included in the body of this report.

We found people who use the service were protected from the risk of abuse.

We found the organisation were reviewing staffing to ensure they continued to provide a quality service which met people's needs.

We saw appropriate recruitment checks were in place prior to the employment of staff. This meant the provider had taken steps to ensure the staff they employed were of good character and suitable people to work with vulnerable groups.

The provider had a system to regularly assess and monitor the quality of service people received.

Although the community nursing services, such as District Nursing, Health Visiting and School Nursing are based at locations throughout Kirklees, they are registered from this address for registration purposes and therefore will be included in this report.

To obtain people’s experiences of the services we reviewed the patient opinion feedback survey, and the monitoring of concerns/complaints.

Comments from people who used the service included:

“My cardiac nurse who visits me at home is excellent, I’ve learned so much from him about my condition.”

One person who had been visited by the diabetic service commented that the staff always had time to talk and reassured them and made them feel positive about living with diabetes.

Another person said the continence service offered them choices in the advice they requested and this allowed them to discuss the best way forward. Another person said that the staff were, “Very good and helpful.”

“I rang the school nurses to arrange a hearing test for my daughter- the very next day it had been arranged, done, and the outcome told to me - fantastic service by the school nursing team in North Huddersfield.”

Where people did not find their experience of the Locala service positive, evidence showed that the Locala governance team had investigated the concerns and responded appropriately to the issues identified.