Care Preference Ltd is a domiciliary care service registered to provide personal care to people living in their own homes. The service provides planned visits and 24 hour support to people who may be living with a neuromuscular disease or other physical disabilities.

We inspected this service on 2 and 17 March 2017. The inspection was announced. The registered provider was given 48 hours’ notice of our visit, because the location provides a domiciliary care service and we needed to be sure that someone would be in the location offices when we visited. At the time of our inspection, 18 people were using the service.

This was the first inspection of this location since it was registered in September 2016.

The registered provider is required to have a registered manager as a condition of registration for this 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. At the time of our inspection, the service had a registered manager and as such the registered provider was compliant with this condition of their registration.

People who used the service told us they felt safe. People’s needs were assessed and care plans and risk assessments were put in place to guide staff on how to provide safe care and support. People told us staff were reliable and their rotas were always covered. There were systems in place to support staff to identify and respond to safeguarding concerns.

The registered provider involved people who used the service in recruiting suitable staff. However, recruitment checks had not always been completed before new staff started shadowing. We have made a recommendation about this in our report.

People were supported where necessary to take prescribed medicines and we received positive feedback about this aspect of their care and support.

Staff received training to support them to provide effective care. Training reports were completed to check and evidence staff’s competency. There was a system of on-going supervision and competency checks to ensure staff were providing safe care.

People who used the service were supported, where necessary, to ensure they ate and drank enough. Guidance from healthcare professionals was incorporated into people’s care plans and people were supported to access healthcare services.

People who used the service provided consistently positive feedback about the kind and caring staff. People had their own team of carers and were involved in recruiting new staff to their team to ensure that they were compatible. People had developed positive caring relationships with the staff that supported them. Staff treated people with dignity and respect.

The service was person-centred. People who used the service were actively involved in coordinating and making decisions about their care and support. People told us staff promoted their independence. Care plans and risk assessments were person centred. People who used the service felt able to raise any issues or concerns and told us the registered manager was responsive to feedback.

The service was well-led. There was a strong person centred culture within the service. The registered manager was responsive to people’s feedback and motivated to provide a ‘bespoke’ service which met people’s needs and enhanced their quality of life.