About the service:

Pure Heart Homecare Ltd is a domiciliary care agency which provides personal care and support to people in their own houses and flats in the community. It provides a service to older and younger adults, some of whom are living with dementia or have a disability. Not everyone using Pure Heart Homecare Ltd receives regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with 'personal care'; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided. At the time of our inspection the service was providing personal care to 24 people.

There was a registered manager in post. 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.

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

People’s experience of using this service:

The provider had systems in place to monitor the quality and safety of the service. In most areas of the service this worked well. However, medicines were not well managed. The provider had not recognised that the support they were giving people to take their medicines met the threshold to be regarded as medicines administration. This meant that all staff would need to have medicines training and competency assessments and that care plans needed to accurately reflect the support required. The provider had not done this and this placed people at potential risk of harm. They had also failed to adequately risk assess a specific issue with regard to medicines. This also placed people at potential risk of harm. Poor management of these issues meant that there were breaches of regulation with regard to medicines management and good governance.

The provider had assessed and managed other risks well. Staff understood their responsibilities with regard to keeping people safe from abuse and knew how to raise concerns if they needed to.

People, and their relatives, were very happy with the care and support provided. People felt safe and relied on Pure Heart to provide staff who had the skills and knowledge needed and who attended on time. There were systems in place to ensure people did not miss their calls and people received consistent care and support from staff who had received appropriate training.

The registered manager carried out person centred assessments of people’s needs and preferences. Care plans were clear and information was easily accessed by staff.

People, or their relatives, consented to their care and were able to express their preferences with regard to how their care was delivered. People were supported to have choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems of the service supported this practice.

People were very positive about the kindness and reliability of the staff, with some being highly praised. Several people told us they would recommend Pure Heart to friends or other family members as they held it in high regard.

The provider consulted people who used the service about their care and addressed people’s informal concerns well. Formal complaints were responded to in a timely manner and to people’s satisfaction.

The provider had good oversight of the day to day running of the service. They were honest and open about the issues relating to medicines we identified and began to address them as soon as we raised them. We were assured by their positive attitude which demonstrated a strong desire to improve and develop the service.

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

Why we inspected:

This inspection was carried out as part of our regu