Caring@Home Ltd

Sylvian Care Swindon is a domiciliary care agency providing care to people in their own homes in Swindon and the surrounding area. At the time of our inspection 29 people were receiving the regulated activity of personal care from the service. Not everyone using the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care, which 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 were not always protected from abuse and harm. Risk assessments were not in place to identify how potential risks should be managed to reduce the likelihood of people experiencing harm. However, staff understood the risks to people and delivered safe care in accordance with people's support plans. There were sufficient staff available to be deployed to keep people safe and meet their needs. However, people told us staff were not punctual and nearly everyone we spoke with had experienced a missed visit. The service aimed to ensure only suitable staff were selected to work with vulnerable people, and checks were carried out to allow safe recruitment decisions to be made. However, some staff had been deployed to work with people before all the background checks had been fully completed. We found people had not been harmed.

People's care plans were person-centred and focused on what was important to people. However, nearly everyone we spoke with told us they had not seen their care plan and they had not been asked for their views. This meant people were not fully involved in their care.

Systems to monitor, maintain and improve the quality of the service were not broad ranging and were mostly, ineffective. None of our concerns were identified by monitoring systems employed by the owner.

Some people and their relatives did not speak positively about the management and said they had no confidence in them.

Staff knew how to report any concerns relating to people’s safety and the service had systems to report and investigate concerns. Each staff member had received an induction and training to enable them to meet people's needs effectively. We saw that supervision meetings were planned, and spot checks were conducted for staff who told us they felt supported by the owner to perform their role. Staff spoke positively of the management and were given appropriate responsibility.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff provided them with care in the least restrictive way possible and acted in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service promoted this practice.

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.

At the time of the inspection, the location supported one autistic person. Staff demonstrated a good knowledge of how to safely and effectively support this person. We assessed the care provision under Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, as it is registered as a specialist service for this population group.

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

This service was registered with us on 13 October 2021, and this is their first inspection.

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

We have identified a breaches in relation to Regulation 12 (safe care and treatment) and Regulation 17 (good governance) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.

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.