- Homecare service
Thornbury Community Services
Assessment report published 31 July 2025
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Thornbury Community Services (TCS) provides commissioned care services across the United Kingdom and is owned by the Acacium Group. The service has offices across the country and delivers care and treatment within the community. The organisation also run a staffing agency that did not fall within the scope of this inspection as we do not regulate this type of service.
Our visit focused on the community care that TCS provides to people in their own homes. The service supplies registered nurses and carers to Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), case managers and private individuals providing care for people with clinically complex needs in their own homes.
The service provided support to people with complex conditions, for example people who required complex and high-intensity care. Within the service there was a specialist team providing support to people with mental health needs, learning disabilities and/or Autism.
There were two registered managers in post at the time of our inspection. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service.
This service was last inspected in July 2022. Following this inspection, we inspected the service as outstanding overall and good in effective.
We carried out this inspection on the 7 and 8 May 2025. We had received information to suggest the quality of care had declined at the service and so we carried out a focused inspection. At this inspection, we inspected enough parts of the effective and safe domains to re-rate these key questions as well as looking at parts of the well led domain.
We rated Safe and Effective as good because:
Staff knew how to report incidents and what to report. There had been no serious incidents in the 12 months before this inspection.
We reviewed 6 care records including the risk assessments and found that staff had reflected the patients voice well.
Staff were experienced and qualified, and had the right skills and knowledge to meet the needs of the patient group.
Staff took all practical steps to enable patients to make their own decisions
Well led was rated good because:
Staff were aware of the organisations values due to the work of managers to communicate these effectively.
However,
There were insufficient systems in place to ensure that medicines were checked and to ensure that staff received supervision. This meant that systems were not in place to ensure quality of care.
We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.
People's experience of this service
We spoke with 9 carers and 2 people who used the service. All reported being very happy with the service provided by Thornbury Community Services. The majority had been with the service for years and said that they had regular, familiar staff who knew the person using the service well.
However, we received one piece of feedback through our share your experience form which came from a relative who was concerned by unfamiliar staff caring for their relative.