Last updated 17 February 2018
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This unannounced inspection was carried out on 11, 12, 13 and 14 December 2017.

At the time of our inspection the service provided personal care to approximately 700 people living in their own homes across Liverpool.

Before our inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service. This included a Provider Information Return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We also looked at the statutory notifications sent to us by the provider about incidents and events that had occurred at the service. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to send to us by law. We also contacted the local authority to gather their feedback about the service. We used this information to plan how the inspection should be conducted.

The inspection team included three social care inspectors and two Experts 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.

During the inspection we spoke with 20 people who were receiving care from the service and 8 people’s relatives. Inspectors visited some people at their homes and others were contacted by telephone by the Experts by Experience. We spoke with 14 members of staff who held different roles within the service. This included the registered manager and the nominated individual. A nominated individual is a person employed as a director, manager or secretary of the organisation with responsibility for supervising the management of the regulated activity.

We looked at a range of documentation at the service’s office including 12 people’s care records, medication records, 10 staff recruitment files, staff training records, accident and incident report forms, health and safety records, safeguarding and complaints records, audits, policies and procedures and records relating to the quality checks undertaken by staff and other management records.