Aware Care Limited

Updated 4 October 2022

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by two inspectors and an Expert by Experience. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

Service and service type

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats.

Registered Manager

This service is required to have a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post. The registered manager was also the nominated individual. The nominated individual is responsible for supervising the management of the service on behalf of the provider.

Notice of inspection

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because it is a small service and we needed to be sure that the provider or registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection.

Inspection activity started on 16 September 2022 and ended on 29 September 2022. We visited the location’s office/service on 20 September 2022.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed all the information we had received about this service since its last inspection in 2019. We requested feedback from stakeholders, including the local safeguarding and commissioning teams. We used information gathered as part of monitoring activity that took place on 8 March 2022 to help plan the inspection and inform our judgements. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return. This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make.

We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with 12 people who used the service and three relatives about their experience of the care provided. We gathered feedback from eight staff members including the registered manager, office manager and care staff.

We reviewed a range of records including; four peoples care plans, risk assessments and medicines records. We looked at two staff files in relation to recruitment. We reviewed a variety of records relating to the management of the service, including policies, procedures and quality assurance records.

Updated 4 October 2022

About the service

Aware Care Limited is a domiciliary care agency which provides personal care to people in their own homes. At the time of our inspection there were 54 people using the service.

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. Fifty-Two people were receiving a regulated activity from the provider.

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

Staff training was not always up to date. However, we found no evidence this impacted on people and the registered manager was working promptly to improve training compliance.

We have made a recommendation the provider continues to promote full compliance with training.

People spoke positively about the care they received from the staff team and the registered manager.

People were protected from the risk of abuse by staff who were knowledgeable about safeguarding. One staff member said, “We protect vulnerable people from harm and abuse.” People’s risks were appropriately assessed, and staff had clear guidance to manage identified risks. The provider followed safe recruitment practices, using a comprehensive values-based recruitment process. People received the support they needed to manage their medicines safely. Staff followed infection control practices effectively. One person said, “They [staff] wear their PPE just like when it was COVID times.” Accidents and incidents were appropriately reviewed, and lessons learnt were shared with staff.

People and staff spoke positively about the culture of the service and the registered manager. Every person and relative we spoke with knew the registered manager by name. One relative said, “It all just seems very efficient, the whole organisation, we’ve been very lucky to have found them.” The registered manager and staff understood the responsibilities of their role. The provider had quality assurance processes in place to review the quality performance and drive service improvement. Audits were robust, including frequent spot checks on the care provided by staff.

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

Rating at last inspection and update

The last rating for this service was requires improvement (14 September 2019) and there were breaches of regulation. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

Why we inspected

We carried out an announced focused inspection of this service on 6 August 2019. A breach of legal requirements was found. The provider has now evidenced what they have done to improve.

We undertook this focused inspection to confirm they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions Safe and Well-led which contain those requirements.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good based on the findings of this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Aware Care Limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.