12 March 2019
During a routine inspection
¿ Reed Specialist Recruitment Ltd - Community Care - Manchester (known as Reed) is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats in the community. Reed provides a service to children and adults across Greater Manchester and Warrington.
¿ Not everyone using Reed receives a 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 Reed was supporting 25 people in total, but only 12 of these people received a regulated activity. Our judgements are based on our findings relating to the 12 people in receipt of personal care support.
People’s experience of using this service:
¿ People and their relatives were positive about the support provided by Reed. They said the staff knew people’s needs well and knew how to maintain their privacy and dignity.
¿ Staff had the training and support to undertake their role. This included specific training, such as epilepsy training, to meet individual’s needs.
¿ The support people required was assessed and reviewed regularly. Risks were identified and guidance provided for staff to manage these known risks.
¿ Care plans detailed the support to be provided by the members of Reed staff and what they were to do at each visit.
¿ Staff were trained in medicines administration. Care plans stated if staff or people’s family were responsible for administering the medicines. Relatives said that people received their medicines as prescribed. One care plan we saw had not been updated to indicate that staff administered one medicine. The staff recorded when medicines had been administered.
¿ A quality assurance system was in place. Matrices were used to monitor care plan reviews, staff training and supervision, incidents and complaints.
¿ Incidents were monitored and reviewed to identify if there were any patterns and to reduce the risk of further incidents occurring.
¿ The national quality assurance manager completed quarterly audits and the Reed central quality department audited the service every six months. The results of these were seen to be positive. Action plans were written to address any issues that had been found.
¿ Staff said they enjoyed working at the service and felt well supported by the registered manager and care co-ordinators.
¿ Staff were safely recruited.
¿ There was a formal complaints policy in place. Any complaints received had been responded to appropriately.
Rating at last inspection: Good; report published 12 October 2016.
Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection based on the rating at the last inspection.
Follow up: We will continue to monitor intelligence we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If any concerning information is received we may inspect sooner.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk