About the service: Alpha Care Services provides personal care and support to people living in their own home. At the time of the inspection, the service was supporting 12 people who required personal care. People’s experience of using this service:
• People and their relatives told us they were happy with the service they received and felt safe amongst the staff who supported them.
• People highly praised the caring nature of staff and told us staff were polite and they respected people’s dignity and privacy.
• Examples were provided of how the service had provided additional support and care such as supporting people to access the local community and maintaining contact with their family.
• People were involved in the assessment of their care and encouraged to retain their independence. Their care plans provided staff with the information they needed to support people. People’s support needs were met. Staff always asked for people’s consent before they supported them.
• There were sufficient staff available to ensure people were supported by familiar staff who understood their needs. Improvement had been made to the records relating to the recruitment of staff.
• People’s support needs and risks had been assessed and were managed well, although more detail was required in the hazards and plans relating to people’s risks.
• People received their medicines in a safe and timely manner and were referred to health care services when their needs changed.
• Staff were trained and supported to carry out their role and were knowledgeable about good care practices and their responsibilities to protect people from harm and abuse.
• Improvement had been made in the quality assurance systems to monitor the quality of the service. However, further systems and tools needed to be implemented to ensure good quality assurance practices would be followed to avoid breaching a legal requirement in future. This would evidence that the registered manager was effectively monitoring and recording their checks and the actions they had taken when shortfalls were identified.
We have made a recommendation about demonstrating positive outcomes for people.
Rating at last inspection: Requires Improvement (Last report was published on 9 January 2018). Following the last inspection, we met with the provider to confirm what they would do and by when to improve the key questions of 'Is the service safe' and 'Is the service well led' to at least good. The provider had taken action to address our concerns to ensure people received a service which was safe and well led.
Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating at the last inspection. We also followed up on the actions taken by the provider to meet the breach of regulations at our previous inspection.
Follow up: The rating of this inspection and the information and intelligence that we receive about the service will determine the timeframe of our next inspection.