About the service: Bluebird Care Shropshire is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats in the community. It provides a service to younger and older adults including people who live with dementia or learning disabilities. At the time of inspection 40 people were using the service.

People’s experience of using this service: At this inspection we found breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. These related to safe care and treatment and governance.

People said they felt safe with the service provided. However, systems were not robust, staffing capacity was not sufficient and staff deployment was not effective to ensure people's needs were met in a safe, timely and consistent way.

Records did not all provide guidance to staff to ensure people received safe, person-centred, appropriate care and support. Systems were not all in place for people to receive their medicines in a safe way.

A robust quality assurance system was not in place to assess the standards of care in the service. Audits that were carried out were not effective as they had not identified issues that we found at inspection.

Systems were not all in place to treat all people with dignity and respect to ensure they were kept informed and received consistent care from the same staff.

Information was accessible to involve people in decision making about their lives.

People had the opportunity to give their views about the service. There was consultation with staff and people. People said they knew how to complain. However, some people said they did not always feel listened to.

People were involved in some decisions about their care and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible. However, some improvements were required to support people to have maximum choice and control of their lives. The policies and systems in the service currently did not all support this practice.

Staff knew about safeguarding procedures. There were other opportunities for staff to receive training. We have made a recommendation that all staff receive specialist training to give them more insight into the needs of the people they support.

Staff worked well with other agencies to ensure people received care and support.

All people were complimentary about the care provided by support staff. They trusted the workers who supported them. They said staff were kind, caring and supportive of people and their families.

Communication was effective and staff felt listened to. Staff said they felt well-supported and were aware of their responsibility to share any concerns about the care provided.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we inspected: This was the first inspection of Bluebird Care Shropshire since it was registered in October 2016.

Follow up: We identified concerns at this inspection. We will therefore re-inspect this service within the published timeframe for services rated requires improvement with two breaches.