About the service: GMT Healthcare is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. It was providing personal care to 16 people at the time of the inspection.

People’s experience of using this service:

Improvements were required to the systems for managing people’s medicines to ensure they were consistently safe. Staff knew people’s risks and how to manage and reduce them to keep people safe, however documentation about risks was not always clear.

People were not always supported to consent to their care in line with law and guidance. People were not always supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives; the policies and systems in the service did not support this practice.

The registered manager needed to ensure staff had all the knowledge and skills required to support people effectively.

The registered manager and provider needed to improve the systems in place to ensure people consistently received safe and good quality care.

Systems were in place to protect people from abuse and staff understood them. People were supported by enough safely recruited staff who knew how to keep people safe.

People were supported by kind and caring staff. People and their relatives were encouraged to be involved in making decisions about their care. People were supported by staff who respected their privacy and dignity and promoted their independence.

Staff understood people’s preferences and people were happy with the personalised care they received.

People knew how to make a complaint if required and felt able to do so. People’s end of life wishes were considered when appropriate.

People and staff told us they found the management team approachable. People and staff felt engaged with the service. The registered manager had plans in place to make improvements and had learned lessons when things had gone wrong.

Rating at last inspection: This was the first inspection of GMT Healthcare since it registered with us (CQC).

Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection as the service had not been inspected since their registration with us (CQC), however we had received information of concern prior to the inspection which helped inform the inspection process.

Enforcement: We identified two breaches of regulations. To see the action we told the provider to take, refer to the end of the full report. We have asked the provider to tell us how they plan to make improvements to become compliant with regulations.

Follow up: We will continue to monitor the service through the information we receive and we will check if improvements have been made at our next inspection.

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