Friendly Homecare

About the service

Friendly Homecare is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care and support to people living in their own homes. The service is registered to offer support to children, older and younger adults, adults with learning disabilities, and people with mental health needs.

Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided. At the time of the inspection, 12 people that included younger and older adults were receiving support with personal care.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

The service was able to demonstrate how they were meeting the underpinning principles of right support, right care, right culture. However, in terms of consent to care, we have recommended the provider is consistent in following the principles of the Mental capacity Act (2005). We also recommended the provider consider current guidance around recording end of life wishes.

Right Support: People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. Staff focused on people's strengths and promoted what they could do. People were supported by staff to pursue their interests as part of their care plan. Staff communicated well with people. Staff supported people with their medicines in a safe way.

Right Care: Staff promoted equality and diversity in their support for people. They understood people's cultural needs and provided culturally appropriate care. Staff protected and respected people's privacy and dignity. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it. The service had enough appropriately skilled staff to meet people's needs and keep them safe.

Right Culture: The values of the organisation, management and staff helped people to feel included and empowered. People and those who were important to them were involved in planning their care. The managers evaluated and monitored the care and support people received to make sure improvements were made when needed. They involved people and other relevant people such as relatives, in care planning.

For more information, please read the detailed findings section of this report. If you are reading this as a separate summary, the full report can be found on the Care Quality Commission (CQC) website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Rating at last inspection and update

The last rating for this service was good (published 7 December 2017).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.

The last inspection took place in January 2017 and the service was rated ‘requires improvement’ in Safe, Effective, Well Led and overall. Caring and Responsive were rated ‘good’. We found breaches of Regulations relating to safe care and treatment, fit and proper persons employed, consent and good governance. Following the last inspection, we asked the provider to complete an action plan to show what they would do and by when to improve the key questions of Safe, Effective and Well Led to at least ‘good’. During this inspection, we found that improvements had been made.

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes in the community. It provides a service to older people, younger disabled adults and children. At the time of the inspection, 13 people were using the service.

The service had 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 provider had procedures in place to protect people from abuse. Care workers we spoke with knew how to respond to safeguarding concerns. People had risk assessments and management plans in place to minimise risks and incidents and accidents were recorded appropriately.

Care workers had the relevant training and supervision, including observational checks, to develop the necessary skills to support people using the service. Safe recruitment procedures were followed to ensure care workers were suitable to work with people using the service.

Medicines were administered and managed safely.

Care workers had relevant training in infection control and used protective equipment as required.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and care workers were responsive to individual needs and preferences. People using the service had developed positive relationships with staff.

People’s dietary requirements were met and care workers were aware of people’s health needs.

People and their families, were involved in their care plans and making day to day decisions.

Relatives and care workers said the registered manager was accessible and responded to concerns appropriately and in a timely manner.

The service had a number of systems in place to monitor, manage and improve service delivery so a quality service was provided to people. This included a complaints system, service audits and satisfaction surveys.

The service registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) on 05 October 2015 and this was their first inspection.

Friendly Homecare is a domiciliary care agency that provides care to people in their own homes. At the time of the inspection there were 12 people using the service. Support provided included support with social activities, personal care and meal preparation. Support hours varied from 24 hours a day to one visit per week.

The service had 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.

At the inspection, we found people had risk assessments but these did not cover all individual risks and the risk management plans did not always provide enough information on how to mitigate the risk or guidance on how to manage it.

People were not always protected against the risks associated with the inappropriate management of medicines.

The service did not always follow safe recruitment procedures and therefore did not always ensure that they were employing suitable care workers to support people using the service.

The service had not always assessed people's capacity to consent to care and treatment and we saw care plans where family members had signed on behalf of the person using the service although there was no indication in the file that the person was unable to sign for themselves.

There were some systems in place to monitor the quality of the service delivered to ensure peoples' needs were being met and to identify where improvements to care could be made. However, the service did not always have robust management systems and there was a lack of analysis of incident and accident forms, and auditing of medicines and financial records.

People using the service told us they felt safe. The service had appropriate safeguarding policies and procedures in place and care workers were aware of how to respond to any safeguarding concerns.

Care workers had the support and training they needed including induction training, supervision, appraisals and spot checks. There were an adequate number of care workers to meet the needs of the people who used the service.

People were involved in their day to day care decisions.

People's health and nutritional needs were recorded.

Care workers were kind and caring. People and care workers had developed good relationships.

Relatives we spoke with said the manager was accessible and responsive and care workers told us they felt supported by their manager. There was a complaints system and people felt able to raise concerns.

We found breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.