About the service:

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. At the time of the inspection the agency was providing personal care to 12 people.

People’s experience of using this service:

We found the systems in place to assess, monitor and improve quality were not fully effective.

Improvements were required to ensure medicines were managed safely and to ensure accurate and up to date copies of people’s care records were available at the office.

The systems in place to record incidents required improvement to ensure this information was accurate.

People were protected from the risk of abuse and avoidable harm because staff had been safely recruited and they knew how to recognise and report abuse. Safe staffing levels were maintained and staff understood how to manage the risks associated with care, including the risks associated with infection.

Staff had the knowledge and skills required to provide effective care. Care records guided staff in how to meet people’s health, wellbeing and nutritional needs.

Effective systems were in place that ensured people’s consent to care was gained. Staff demonstrated how they would support people who were unable to consent to their care. The approach staff described followed the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 to ensure decisions were made in people’s best interests.

People were supported by caring staff who promoted their right to privacy, dignity and independence.

People were involved in the planning of their care and care and support was delivered in line with people’s individual preferences.

Effective systems were in place to ensure lessons were learned from incidents and complaints.

The service met the characteristics of ‘requires improvement’ in safe and well-led and good in effective, caring and responsive. This meant the service was rated as ‘requires improvement’ overall. No Regulatory breaches were identified, more information is available in the full report below.

Rating at last inspection:

This was the first inspection of this location.

Why we inspected:

This was a planned inspection and was part of our scheduled plan of visiting services to check the safety and quality of care people received.

Follow up:

We will continue to monitor the service to ensure that people received safe, high quality care. Further inspections will be planned for future dates.