Assured Care (Stockport) Limited provides twenty four hour domiciliary care and support to adults in their own home. The service’s office is located in Stockport near Manchester.

This was an announced inspection on the 12 October 2016. Two days prior to the inspection, we contacted the provider and told them of our plans to carry out a comprehensive inspection of the service. This was because we needed to be sure that someone would at the office.

The service had a registered manager in place at the time of our inspection. 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.

Policies and procedures were in place to safeguard people from abuse and staff had received training in safeguarding adults. Staff were recruited robustly to ensure they were suitable to work with vulnerable adults.

Policies, procedures and staff training should mean the administration of medicines was safe.

Staff had access to infection prevention and control training, policies and procedures to help prevent the spread of infection.

The provider was meeting the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) and the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.

People were supported to take a nutritious diet and sufficient fluids to remain healthy.

Staff induction and training was ongoing to support them to look after people who used the service. Supervision had recommenced after a gap. Staff told us they felt able to contact managers if they needed to and felt supported. We made a recommendation that the registered manager look at best practice guidance around the frequency and content of formal supervision sessions for staff.

We saw the office was sufficiently well equipped to provide a good service.

We saw from looking at plans of care and speaking with people who used the service that people were asked to give their consent to care and treatment.

People who used the service told us staff were kind and caring. From our observations we saw that staff had a good rapport with people and knew them well.

We saw records were stored confidentially and plans of care were individualised to each person, were kept up to date and audited by managers.

People told us they felt staff would listen to them if they had any concerns and were given information about how to complain if they wanted to.

There were systems in place to monitor the quality of service provision. Policies and procedures gave staff information about best practice for many topics such as medicines administration, safeguarding and infection control.

People and professionals were given documentation which informed them of what the service did or did not provide to help assist them to make a choice to use the service.

People were asked their views in questionnaires to help the service maintain or improve the quality of the service. Staff were also able to air their views at meetings.

The inspection was carried out by one inspector. We considered all the evidence we had gathered under the outcome we inspected. We used the information to answer one of the questions we always ask: Is the service effective?

Below is a summary of what we found. The summary is based on our inspection of care worker personnel records and speaking with a senior care coordinator about the way in which care workers were recruited. If you want to see the evidence supporting our summary please read the full report.

We inspected Assured Care (Stockport) Ltd in December 2013. We found the provider had not gathered enough satisfactory information through their interview process to determine the person’s suitability for the role and did not follow the services own recruitment and selection procedure by carrying out the relevant pre-employment checks when employing staff. Therefore it could not be determined if people were competent to perform their role to meet the needs of people who use the service.

Is the service effective?

Recruitment and selection procedures were in place which included the provider obtaining up to three written references before the person commenced employment. This ensured as far as possible that only people with a good character were employed at the service.

We saw procedures were in place to ensure people’s consent was gained in relation to the care that was being provided.

We saw needs assessment records that included useful information about the care and support the people needed.

We saw there were policies and procedures that were in place to ensure that people who used the service would be safe.

We looked at staff records and saw evidence that some employees had not been appropriately recruited and the provider had not followed the services own recruitment and selection procedure to carry out all of the relevant checks when employing staff.

We saw there was a system in place to monitor and evaluate the service.