POVA Care Ltd

POVA Care Ltd is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to people in their own homes. At the time of our inspection there were 27 people using the service.

People’s experience of the 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 assessment 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 did not care or support for anyone with a learning disability or an autistic person. However, we assessed the care provision under Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, as it had recently registered as a specialist service for this population group.

Right Support

Staff supported people to have choice, control in their care and support. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. The service was flexible to people’s needs and people told us how the provider was responsive to their changing needs.

Right Care

Staff understood people's cultural needs and provided appropriate care. One person’s relative told us how the care staff allocated to their family member were able to speak with them in their own language. People received kind and compassionate care. Staff protected and respected people's privacy and dignity. Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. The service worked well with other agencies to do so. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it. The service had enough appropriately skilled staff to meet people's needs and keep them safe. Staff understood people's individual communication needs. People's care, treatment and support plans reflected their needs, and this promoted their wellbeing.

Right Culture

People received good quality care and support because the provider and staff focused on meeting their needs and wishes to enhance their quality of life. People and, where appropriate, their relatives were involved in planning their care. Relatives and staff felt well supported by the management team and able to raise concerns with them. They felt concerns were acted on and lessons learnt when things went wrong. There were systems to monitor and audit the service to help improve quality and people's experiences.

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 29 December 2018.

Why we inspected

We inspected due to the length of time since the last inspection.

We undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe, caring and well-led only. For those key question not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

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

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.

POVA Care Limited is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes in the community. At the time of our inspection, personal care and support was being delivered to five people.

There was a registered manager in post. 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.

Staff were being recruited safely and there were enough staff to take care of people. People told us staff did not rush, arrived at the correct time and stayed for the agreed length of time. Staff were receiving appropriate training and support, including having their competency assessed. Staff supervision and appraisal was planned to discuss their ongoing development needs.

People who used the service and their relatives told us staff were helpful, attentive and caring. We saw people were treated with respect and compassion.

Care plans were up to date and detailed what care and support people wanted and needed, although some needed more detail. Risk assessments were in place and showed what action had been taken to mitigate any risks which had been identified. People felt safe and systems were in place to ensure appropriate referrals would be made to the safeguarding team when necessary.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

People’s healthcare needs were being met and medicines were mostly managed safely. At the time of our inspection, the service was not supporting anyone with their nutritional needs.

A complaints procedure was in place, but no concerns had been raised.

Everyone spoke highly of the registered manager and said they were approachable and supportive. Quality monitoring calls to people were in place. Most people had only recently started using the service and the registered manager was working to implement systems to monitor the quality of care provided to them.

We found all the fundamental standards were being met. Further information is in the detailed findings below.