26 April 2016
During a routine inspection
Choice Homecare Ltd is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care and live-in staff to people in their own homes. At the time of this inspection the service was providing support to 13 people. The service had a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
People receiving a service were safe. Staff understood their responsibilities to recognise and report abuse because they had received safeguarding training and followed the provider’s safeguarding policy. People had detailed risk assessments in place to protect them from avoidable harm. People received their medicines safely and the provider operated a recruitment and selection process that ensured people were safe to work with potentially vulnerable adults.
People received care and support effectively delivered by staff who had on-going training and who were supervised by the registered manager. Staff and the registered manager understood and upheld people’s rights in relation to mental capacity legislation. People had access to healthcare services as and when they needed them and their nutritional and hydration needs were met.
People were treated with respect and dignity by staff who were caring. People were pain free and treated with compassion as they approached the end of life.
People received personalised care following an assessment of their needs. People were involved in developing their care plans and enabled to engage in activities they chose. The provider gathered the views of people and their relatives and used these to improve the service.
The service was well-led by an experienced registered manager. The service collaborated with healthcare professionals to meet people’s needs and made timely referrals to specialists for their input. There service used a number of quality auditing processes to continuously improve the service they delivered.