About the service: Learning & Development Bureau Ltd is a domiciliary care agency that was providing personal care to three people aged 65 and over at the time of the inspection. The service is also known as ‘Carer House’.

People’s experience of using this service:

Prior to the inspection there was a significant lack of records at the service in that risk assessments had not been completed and care plans lacked details. This meant that people had not always experienced safe care. Some of these issues were addressed during or immediately after the inspection but there were still areas that needed to be improved.

The support people received with their medicines was not always safe. For example, there was a lack of information on what medicines were for and what to do if a person did not take their medicines.

There was enough staff to meet people’s needs. There was some continuity of staffing where people had regular carers and these carers knew people well. However, continuity of care was not always consistent. Some staff were late to calls and some calls were missed.

Staff did not always provide support in a respectful way although when issues were raised about this they were addressed by the provider, but there were still some ongoing concerns.

Staff had received the training they needed however, there were concerns about how staff practiced manual handling on two occasions.

There was a lack of management oversight which meant people did not always receive high quality person centred care. When things went wrong lessons were not always learnt and people’s care plans were not updated. One person was not supported to access support from health and social care professionals following a fall until we raised this as a concern.

People knew how to complain, and the provider regularly met or communicated with people and their relatives. People told us that they felt positive about this. However, some complaints were dealt with as informal complaints and were not always recorded.

Relatives and people were involved in planning their care and in reviews of their care. People had choice about their care and were listened too.

We found two breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations. More information is in the full report.

Rating at last inspection: This is the first inspection of this service.

Why we inspected: This inspection was planned inspection based on the length of time since the service had registered with CQC.

Enforcement: Action we told provider to take is detailed at the end of this report.

Follow up: Following this report being published we will ask the provider to send us information on how they will make changes to ensure the rating of the service improves to at least Good. We will revisit the service in the future to check if improvements have been made.