Helping Hands Horley provides personal care services to people in their own homes. At the time of our inspection 21 people were receiving a personal care service from the agency, most of whom were older people or people with physical needs.

The inspection took place on 01 March 2017 and included a visit to the agency’s office, interviews with care workers and telephone calls with people who used the service and their families.

The service did not have a registered manager. 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. The current manager had been managing the service since September 2016 and was in the process of applying to be registered.

The service was opened in June 2016 and the management team were still building the staff team at helping Hands Horley. The manager was realistic about the number of people the service could safely support and safely matched and deployed staff to people.

There were good systems in place to safeguard people from the risk of abuse and avoidable harm. Recruitment procedures were sufficiently robust to assess the suitability of new staff and those employed understood their roles and responsibilities in keeping people safe.

People’s needs were comprehensively assessed and there were good systems in place to identify and manage individual risks in a proactive and enabling way. Staff understood the importance of allowing people to live their lives as they wished, whilst balancing this with a duty of care to keep them safe.

Staff worked in close partnership with other healthcare professionals to ensure people were supported to maintain good health and their medicines managed safely. Where needed, people were safely assisted with the management of their medicines and maintain adequate nutrition and hydration.

Staff received ongoing training and support to ensure they had the skills and experience to meet people’s needs. Staff respected people’s right to make decisions from people and provided support to people in line with the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

People had positive relationships with their care workers and consistently received high quality and compassionate support. Staff were knowledgeable about the people they cared for and had a good understanding about their preferences and what was important to them.

People were included in the planning and reviewing of their support needs and as such received personalised care that was responsive to their individual and changing needs. People’s views were actively sought and their feedback listened to and acted upon.

The service was effectively managed and the provider had good systems in place to regularly monitor quality and identify areas for improvement. The new manager had fostered an open culture amongst the team and created a service in which people were placed at the centre.