About the service:

The Cambridge Care Company based in Bury St Edmunds provides a domiciliary care service to people living in the community and to people living in a supported living setting. The agency covers Bury town, Sudbury town and Great Cornard. Currently there are approximately 400 care hours provided in Bury St Edmunds and 300 hours provided in Sudbury and Great Cornard.

People’s experience of using this service:

People who use this service continue to receive a good service.

• People who use Cambridge Care Bury St Edmunds are supported by sufficient staff who are appropriately recruited. Staff are well trained and know how best to support older people and people living with a learning disability who live in the community. People were able to lead a lifestyle of their choosing. They had plenty of opportunities to retain/develop life skills and increase their independence and remain part of their community.

• People were supported to have a healthy lifestyle, access healthcare support and were provided with staff who promoted good overall wellbeing. through developing relationships that were based upon mutual respect. People told us they particularly liked the caring staff who supported them.

• Management of the service had developed systems to monitor how the service was doing. This included feedback from people and using complaints to drive improvements for the benefit of people who used the service.

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

Rating at last inspection: On 26 August 2017 we rated this service as Good.

Why we inspected: This was a scheduled inspection that was brought forward. One other location of this provider had been rated ‘requires improvement’ and we wanted to check this location had not altered. We found this service remained Good.

Follow up: Going forward we will continue to monitor this service and plan to inspect in line with our reinspection schedule for those services rated good.

Cambridge Care Company is a domiciliary care agency based in the centre of Bury St Edmunds. The service supports people to live in their own homes in Bury St Edmunds, the surrounding area and in Sudbury. Support is provided to people with learning and physical disabilities, people living with dementia and people in need of support due to their old age or mental health. They currently have approximately 400 hours that they support people and hold a contract with the local authority as a preferred provider of theirs.

At the last inspection on 13, 14 and 19 May 2015, the service was rated Good. At this inspection we found the service remained Good overall. This means the service continued to meet all relevant fundamental standards, and in addition at this inspection we found they exceeded these in relation to well led.

The service had an exceptional registered manager in place who had strong values to support people as individuals and was someone who was highly experienced. The training, systems and processes in place made for an outstandingly well led service.

People were at the heart of the service and were truly listened to in several ways that enabled them to have a voice to determine their own care and support as well as how the agency could develop and improve. Not only did the registered manager continue to assess the quality of the service through a regular programme of audits, they reviewed audits and systems in place to see if these could be developed further for the benefit of people.

People experienced a reliable service that they found met their individual needs. Care plans were well written; person centred and were regularly reviewed. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service support this practice. People were safe from potential harm as risks were assessed and minimised, staff had enhanced safeguarding training and medicines were robustly managed where needed. Where needed people were supported to have appropriate amounts to eat and drink and supported to access healthcare.

Staff were positive about Cambridge Care as a company. They were appropriately supported and encouraged with training and development opportunities. Staff were not only safely recruited, but recruited for their values and ability to become caring staff.

Further information is in the detailed findings below.