15 November 2022
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Alina Homecare Specialist Care - Somerset is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people with learning disabilities and/or autistic people living in their own homes in the community. It also provides care and support to people living in 'supported living' accommodation, so that they can live in their own home as independently as possible. At the time of the inspection, the service was supporting 18 people with their personal care needs in Somerset and Dorset.
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
We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.
Right Support
Improvements were required to staffing, structures and communication to ensure a consistent service which enabled people to fully achieve their aspirations, pursue their interests and access their local community.
The service supported people to have choice, control and independence. Staff supported people with their medicines in a way that promoted positive health outcomes. The service had plans and guidance to support people with identified risks. Staff supported people to make decisions following best practice in decision-making. Staff communicated with people in ways that met their needs.
Right Care
People received kind and supportive care. Staff responded to people’s individual needs. Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it. The service had appropriately skilled staff to meet people’s needs. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.
Right culture
The service was working to enable people and those important to them to work with staff to develop the service. Staff valued and acted upon people’s views. Systems were in place to monitor the quality of the service to people. Staff ensured risks of a closed culture were minimised so that people received support based on transparency, respect and inclusivity.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection
The last rating for this service was good (published 25 June 2021).
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.
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 remained good.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Alina Homecare Specialist Care - Somerset on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.