- Homecare service
Meridian Health and Social Care - Manchester North
Assessment report published 9 July 2025
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of assessment: 2 April to 29 May 2025.
Meridian Health and Social Care - Manchester North is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to people in their own homes. The service was supporting 130 people at the time of the assessment.
The assessment was triggered by intelligence we received regarding care visits not taking place as planned. The local authority had been working with the provider and had agreed to a temporary suspension of new referrals and an action plan was put in place.
This was the service’s first assessment and it has been rated requires improvement. We identified 5 breaches of the legal regulations. The service was in breach for person centred care, safe care and treatment, safeguarding, staffing, and good governance.
The provider had failed to maintain effective governance systems demonstrating clear management and oversight of the service. Improvements had started and progress was being made but there were still significant shortfalls in the service.
People were supported by staff who understood how to protect them from abuse and avoidable harm. However, people’s needs were at risk of being neglected as call durations were too short to enable their needs to be met. For example, the local authority would allocate a 30-minute visit and staff would only be in attendance for 5-10 minutes. Further improvement was needed to ensure people’s needs were not impacted negatively by poor scheduling of visits.
People’s medicines were not managed safely and there was poor oversight of the risks involved in people’s care. Care plans and risk assessments had all been updated by the end of the assessment but improvements were needed to ensure regular reviews of care occurred and new systems were needed to ensure people’s medicines were administered safely.
The provider had identified prior to the assessment that all the care plans and risk assessments were of poor quality and needed to be reviewed and updated. Two thirds had been completed by the beginning of the assessment, and all had been completed by the end of the assessment.
Staff were recruited safely and the service had effective infection control processes in place.
Staff told us there had been improvement since the new management team started in January 2025. They felt valued and told us the service was now more organised.
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 also asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.
People's experience of this service
We received mixed feedback from people and families we spoke with. While some people expressed general satisfaction with their care, our assessment found elements of care did not meet the expected standards.
Half of the people using the service were impacted by poor punctuality and calls that were rushed. This was reflected in the feedback we received with one third of the people we spoke with relaying concerns about punctuality and call duration.
The service supported 3 people with a learning disability or autism. The provider needed to review their approach to ensure it has taken account of guidance and best practice in this area of care.
The provider had made a concerted effort to engage with people since the new management team had started, and they had updated all the care plans and risk assessments and involved people in this process.
We received positive feedback about staff from around half the people we spoke to, and we also received surveys from the provider carried out with people that demonstrated some people were happy with their care and progress was being made to address the shortfalls identified in the service.