Meridian Health and Social Care - Manchester North

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

Caring – this means we looked for evidence that the provider involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

This is the first assessment for this service. This key question has been rated requires improvement. This meant people did not always feel well-supported and care was not always person centred.

This service scored 55 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The provider treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity.

Staff understood the importance of treating people with dignity and respect. They provided examples and demonstrated their understanding during telephone interviews with inspectors. They told us, “Yes, that is a number one priority that we are encouraged to do, and I also encourage carers to treat all people with integrity and respect” and “Yes, every service user is treated with respect and dignity.”

People had reported in surveys recently carried out by the provider that they were treated with dignity and respect.

Some people we spoke to were very positive about the staff. They told us, “They are ok, they make conversation with me and then get on and do their job. I would give them 9/10. They know me as a person” and “Honestly speaking they are brilliant; they always make sure I have water and a brew. They are all smart and courteous. I can have a laugh and a joke with the men and ladies that come to look after me. They help me with medications and getting washed.”

The provider did not always treat people as individuals or make sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They did not always take account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

Care plans included information about people’s personal, cultural, social and religious needs. They identified what was important to people and how to support them where possible. More detail was required to ensure people’s preferences related to care tasks was clearer.

People in need of support to communicate needed clearer and more detailed information to help maximise their involvement in their care.

The provider did not always promote people’s independence, so people did not always know their rights and have choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

The high number of short calls and poor punctuality impacted on people’s choice and control.

Care plans did promote people’s independence by highlighting what part of each task they could do themselves. This needed to be more consistent and could be improved with more detail.

It was not clear from care plans that people’s needs were always understood. Staff did not always respond to people’s needs to ensure any concerns were shared promptly with relevant staff in the office and other health professionals.

People with a learning disability, mental health issues or autism did not have enough information in their care plans to support staff to understand their level of cognitive or intellectual functioning and their baseline presentation. This meant that carers would not have a good understanding of usual behaviours, presentation, levels of anxiety and when they should be concerned. Triggers for declining care and support were not apparent and strategies to manage any decline were not recorded. This was important as some people were at risk of self-neglect.

We found instances where staff had not reported concerns to the office where required.

The provider had not always cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff. They had not always supported or enabled staff to deliver person-centred care.

Staff told us a lack of support and poor management in 2024 had impacted on staff wellbeing. They also told us there had been a marked improvement in 2025. A new management team had started in January 2025 and staff felt valued and they told us they were now treated fairly.

Staff told us, “Since the new managers started in January it has changed dramatically. Much better” and “When I started it wasn’t so great, after 1 month a manager had left and I struggled without good support. Four months later a new manger came and this didn’t work. The current manager is noticeably better. I was literally crying in December 2024, the whole office was upset. It is amazing now.”