Ashcroft Care Services provides personal care and support to people in their own homes; they provide support for adults with who have physical and learning disabilities. Ashcroft is employed as the primary carer, often supporting people with all aspects of their lives. They also provide support in other cases such as where a person lives with parents or relatives, and fulfil a secondary support role. This might involve, for example, supporting an individual to attend a specific activity, such as attending college or following a leisure pursuit.

The service ranges from a few support hours several times a week, to 24-hour support for some people in supported living settings. A supported living service is when people live in their own home and receive care and support in order to promote their independence. People have tenancy agreements with a landlord and a separate agreement to receive their care and support from the domiciliary care agency.

Ashcroft Care Services also provide twenty-four-hour emergency on-call assistance to ensure that people living independently can access support at all times. They provide support to people with domestic tasks such as housework. At the time of our inspection the service was providing care and support to 11 people.

The inspection took place on the 11 November and was announced. We told the provider two days before that we would be coming. This was to ensure the registered manager was available when we visited the agency’s office and that we had the opportunity to speak to people who used the service.

The service had two registered managers both were in day-to-day charge of the service. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

People were at the heart of the service, which was organised to suit their individual needs and aspirations. People we spoke with felt the service was excellent and the staff and manager provided above average care and support.

People’s achievements were celebrated and their views were sought and acted on. People were supported by staff that were compassionate and treated them with dignity and respect. Staff were trained to use a range of communication tools suitable to enable the people they supported to express their needs and wishes.

People were active members of their local community and led busy and fulfilling lives. There was evidence of positive outcomes for people, and that people had progressed over time, gained new skills and increased their independence. People were enabled through positive risk taking, to challenge themselves to achieve. Staff were supported to challenge practice and to experiment and try different approaches with people.

The service worked in partnership with other organisations in creative and innovative ways to improve people’s independence. This included working with a variety of organisations to gain opportunities for people to get work experience and gain employment.

The support provided to people was self-directed. People choose when to receive support, who they wished to support them and how they wished to use the support provided to them. Staff treated people with kindness, dignity, respect, and spent time getting to know them and their specific needs and wishes.

Staff had an understanding of abuse and the safeguarding procedures that should be followed to report abuse .The staff we spoke with were able to demonstrate what they would do should they have any concern that abuse was taking place.

Staff were encouraged to raise concerns and report incidents. Incidents were used as opportunities to review what worked well for each person and what needed to be changed. The people we spoke with were aware of the need for risk assessin

During our visit we met and spoke with four people who used the service. We also spoke with the registered manager, community support manager, supported living manager, four care staff and two relatives.

We spoke with people who used the service and their commented were, “I love living here.”, “staff are good to me and help me with cooking.”, “I do my medication myself.”

Representatives we telephoned told us they were satisfied with the care that their relatives received. One representative told us that “The care provided is fantastic, I am incredibly happy with the support provided to my relative and staff are proactive.” Another person told us “ I am in regular contact with the manager and can discuss about my relative’s care plan any time which I am fully involve and the service enable people to change their lives.”

The agency had a robust recruitment procedure in place; this meant that people were cared by people who had been checked to work with vulnerable people.

We found that the provider had a system in place to monitor the quality of the service they provided and we found that people were generally satisfied with the care and treatment they received.

People were protected against the risks associated with medicines because the provider did have appropriate arrangements in place to manage medicines.

People were protected from the risks of unsafe or inappropriate care and treatment because accurate and appropriate records were maintained.

People told us that they felt involved in the development of their care package and that they were well supported. They told us “They are a brilliant service, I’m very happy and I get the care that I want”. We also spoke to representatives of people who use the service. One representative told us that “Ashcroft spent a lot of time and effort with us to ensure that the support plan for my relative was right and that we were happy. I can’t fault them, we’re very lucky”. Another representative told us “They shine like a beacon as a company; they are always thinking ahead”. People we spoke to also told us that the staff, known as support workers, seemed well trained and caring.