- Homecare service
Utopia Care Limited
Assessment report published 26 June 2026
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Dates of assessment 27 March to 11 May 2026. This was the first assessment of the service. Utopia Care Limited, is a Domiciliary care agency based in Thetford and delivers personal care to people in their own homes across Norfolk and Suffolk, supporting a range of needs including older age, learning disability, dementia and long term health conditions. At the time of the assessment, there were 13 Service Users receiving regulated activity. The assessment was completed remotely, with a site visit on Friday 17 April 2026.
We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence, and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people; this guidance was considered as part of the assessment. We found that the care provided to people by Utopia care required improvement in some areas and did not always meet their regulatory obligations. This assessment found the provider to be in breach of four legal regulations relating to safe care and treatment, consent, and governance.
The provider used appropriate equipment, worked with external healthcare professionals and had established systems for care planning, medicines oversight and review. However, this assessment identified significant and systemic shortfalls in consent processes, safe care and treatment, and governance. Care plans were not consistently updated following significant health events, Mental Capacity Act (MCA) documentation was incomplete, and mandatory training requirements were not fully met. Oversight mechanisms existed but were not always effective in identifying, escalating or addressing risks. We raised these concerns with the provider on 17 April 2026, and they have started taking positive steps to remedy the issues.
People's experience of this service
People using the service and their relatives consistently reported positive experiences of care. They described carers as kind, respectful and trustworthy, and spoke positively about continuity of staff and the relationships built over time.
People described receiving care that was respectful, dignified and person centred. Feedback included comments such as “I cannot fault the care provision” and “they tick all the boxes for what was promised at the start.” People felt listened to and involved in care planning, and personal care was delivered sensitively. Carers were viewed as observant, reliable and a source of valued companionship.
The concerns identified through records reviewed were not generally visible to people using the service. People reported that medicines were given appropriately, carers arrived on time and they felt safe. This difference between positive lived experience and weaknesses in governance is a key finding of this assessment. While people did not experience immediate harm, the identified failures increased the risk of unsafe or unlawful care.