We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) 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 Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team:

The inspection was completed by one adult social care inspector.

Service and service type:

Langdon community is a small Domiciliary Care Agency which provides personal care to people in their own homes. The service specialises in providing support to people with a learning disability. Support is provided both to people living independently and those living in small group settings.

Not everyone using Langdon Community receives regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided. At the time of the inspection the service was supporting 13 people with personal care.

At the time of the inspection the service had recently recruited an experienced manager who was beginning the process of registration with the Care Quality Commission. This means that when the registration process is completed they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection:

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care. We needed to be sure that they would be in.

Inspection site visit activity started on 05 March 2019 and ended on 26 March 2019. We visited the office location on 5 March 2019 to see the manager and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures. On 26 March we visited people in their homes to speak with them and to speak with staff.

What we did:

Prior to our inspection we requested a provider information return (PIR); this is a form that asks the provider to give us some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We reviewed the information we held about the service including notifications the provider had sent to us. We contacted the local authority safeguarding and local commissioning teams to obtain their views about the service. We contacted Healthwatch which is an independent organisation which collects the views of people who use health and social care services for any feedback they had received. This information was used to identify key lines of enquiry as part of the inspection.

During the inspection we obtained feedback from five people who were receiving support from the service, and spoke with three relatives on the telephone to gain an understanding of their views of the service and quality of support that people were receiving. We spoke with the manager, in house social worker and seven care staff.

We looked at three people's care records which included a wide range of support plans and risk assessments. We reviewed a range of documents relating to how the service was managed including; five staff personnel files, staff training records, policies, procedures and quality assurance audits.