1st Grade Care (Bristol)

1st Grade Care is a domiciliary care service providing personal and nursing care to 21 people.

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.

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

People’s comments reflected that there had been a period of difficulty in relation to how care packages had been managed. This related to call times being changed without involving people. However, this had been resolved and people acknowledged the service was improving. One person commented,”I feel that the new team are improving things and listening to our requests. I think there is a long way to go, but it appears to be going the right way”. People were clearly comfortable with the staff that cared for them and had opportunity to build positive relationships, “I am very comfortable with the staff I have in my home. They do their best to care for me”.

People told us they felt safe. There were systems and processes in place to ensure care was delivered in a safe way. Risk assessments were completed to guide staff and staff received training in topics such as safeguarding, moving and handling and medicines.

Staff were satisfied with the training and support they received and felt able to raise any issues or concerns they had. They told us they were kept informed of important developments in the service.

Care was planned and delivered with the full involvement of the person concerned, and their relatives if this was agreed by the person. Care plans were written in a person centred manner and took account of the aspects of care people were able to be independent with. Care was reviewed regularly to ensure it was up to date and reflected people’s current needs.

People felt able to raise issues and concerns if they had them; we saw examples of when complaints had been formally addressed through the complaints process.

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.

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

Rating at last inspection

This was the first inspection of the service, registered in February 2017. The service had not been operating for some periods since first registering.

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection based on current priorities for inspection.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.