- Homecare service
Lifeways Community Care Leicester (West)
We served a warning notice on Lifeways Community Care Limited on 29 September 2025 for failing to meet the regulations relating to safe care and treatment, risk management oversight and good governance systems at Lifeways Community Care Leicester (West)
Report from 26 August 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of inspection 17 September to 29 September 2025. The inspection was the provider’s first inspection of this location and was prompted due to concerns received about safe care and treatment and a lack of effective management oversight. We undertook a comprehensive inspection.
Lifeways Community Care Limited (Leicestershire West) provides personal care for people living in their own tenancies. The main building is purpose built with 16 individual 1 bedroom flats, including various communal spaces which comprise of a lounge, kitchen and dining area, a games room and bathroom facilities. There was also two single tenancy properties in separate dwellings. The service provides support to autistic people and to people with learning disabilities. At the time of our inspection there were 15 people receiving the regulated activity of personal care. We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted.
We identified under the key questions Safe and Well Led the service was in breach of legal regulation in relation to safe care and treatment, safe and effective staffing, and good governance.
Risk management in relation to how people’s individual emotional and behavioural needs were assessed, planned for and mitigated were not sufficiently robust and at times meant people were not safe from harm. Staff lacked training, skills, knowledge and competencies to support people effectively to manage distressed behaviours and specific care tasks such as moving people safely. Safeguarding processes were not always followed, and incidents were not managed or reported in line with the provider’s policy.
Leaders of the service did not have effective oversight of people's assessed needs to ensure these were delivered safely or effectively. Management of incidents was poor and did not lead to a culture of learning and improvement.
In instances where CQC have decided to take civil or criminal enforcement action against a provider, we will publish this information on our website after any representations and/ or appeals have been concluded.
We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.
People's experience of this service
Despite the concerns we found at this inspection, we received overall positive feedback from people and their relatives regarding the care and support people received. Relatives confirmed they were happy with the care their loved ones received and felt they were safe and cared for. Comments included, “I would recommend the service to others. I am so happy [person] is at Lifeways”. and “On the whole staff understand my relative, the service is good, and they are all very helpful.”.
We observed staff interacting with people to assess whether they received good care. Some people could not directly tell us about their experience. This approach showed most staff knew people well; however, we observed, and staff told us they lacked specific skills and training to ensure they could communicate with people in their preferred way and support people effectively when they became distressed. Therefore, we could not be assured that all people receiving this service were enabled to share their feedback in a meaningful way.