This was an announced inspection carried out on 12 October 2016.

Lagan’s Foundation is a charitable organisation that provides respite for families with babies or young children diagnosed with a heart defect or feeding difficulties. Lagan’s provides at-home and in hospital support to parents across the country.

Lagan’s operates from a domestic dwelling in the Horwich area of Bolton. The staff supporting families were highly trained volunteers.

The service had a registered manager in place at the time of our inspection. 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 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The registered manager was supported by a small team consisting of a volunteer coordinator, a family liaison officer and a business development fundraising officer.

The last inspection was carried out on 23 April 2013; we did not identify concerns with the quality of care and support provided.

At this inspection Lagan’s was supporting 25 families covering areas England and Wales. There were 59 families on a waiting list waiting support from the Lagan’s team.

We looked at the care records for four families supported. All care records were stored electronically The system used enabled all records and communication sheets to scanned in to the system. The systems had a secured backup network in New York, Australia and Europe so data could be always be retrieved in the event of system failure.

We found care records were detailed, personalised and responsive to the children’s and family’s needs. The care records showed that a comprehensive assessment was completed prior to the support commencing. This ensured that the serious conditions that the child needed support with was conveyed to the registered manager and their team.

The service had robust recruitment procedures in place. Every volunteer had a detailed recruitment file. These were electronically stored.

We found the service had suitable safeguarding procedures in place, which were designed to protect children and families from the risk of abuse.

We looked at a selection of the policies and procedures. Every volunteer is provided with a condensed version of the policies and procedures for them to refer to as required.

New volunteers undertook a comprehensive induction programme, which included training at Alder Hay Children’s Hospital. This was also part of the interview process and support workers had to pass this training in order to be offered part of the team. Lagan's also worked closely with Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and Albert Royal, Wigan Children’s Ward and other service across the country.

We saw records that show volunteers had weekly contact with the registered manager or more frequently if required.

We found that before any care and support was offered the service obtained written consent from parents. We were shown examples of the completed consent forms.

We contacted some of volunteers following our inspection who told us that they were fully supported by the registered manager and that the service was very caring, professional and thorough.

The registered manager liaised and worked closely with other healthcare professionals to share good practice and new ideas.

We found the service undertook a comprehensive range of checks to monitor the quality of service delivery. This included volunteer and family feedback surveys, care records check, incidents and accidents and complaints.