Meridian Health and Social Care - Manchester North

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

Effective – this means we looked for evidence that people’s care, treatment and support achieved good outcomes and promoted a good quality of life, based on best available evidence.

This is the first assessment for this service. This key question has been rated requires improvement. This meant the effectiveness of people’s care, treatment and support did not always achieve good outcomes or was inconsistent.

This service scored 50 (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 did not always make sure people’s care and treatment were effective because they had not regularly reviewed their care needs with them to ensure their needs were understood and were up to date.

Regular reviews of care plans and risk assessments had not been taking place in 2024. The provider had responded in January 2025 and all the care plans and risk assessments had been reviewed and updated by the end of the assessment.

The provider had also carried out surveys with people in 2025 to check people’s needs were being met and to request feedback about their experience of care being provided.

The provider did not always plan and deliver people’s care in line with legislation and current evidence-based good practice and standards.

Clinically recognised tools were not used appropriately to assess and monitor people’s needs. We reviewed 3 care plans where people had a Waterlow assessment. These assessments help to determine an individual’s risk of developing pressure ulcers. All 3 had identified a risk but had not been reviewed and no guidance was provided to staff to support them to manage and monitor the risk. This put people at risk of developing pressure ulcers.

Care planning ensured staff were aware of specific dietary needs and how to meet them. One person’s food allergy had not been recorded correctly. This was updated during the assessment.

The central team at head office supported the service to keep up to date with good practice and expected standards. They had not done this consistently or effectively. The care plans had not been up to date, and the quality had also been poor. This resulted in widespread shortfalls and included the need to improve the guidance for staff to support people with catheter care safely and communication care plans for people with a learning disability or autism also needed improvement. Both were updated during the inspection.

The provider did not always work well across teams and services to support people.

Care records were not always detailed and did not contain enough information for staff to share with other health and social care professionals as needed. People with a learning disability and/or autism were not provided with a hospital passport. This is a document that provides healthcare staff with information about a patient’s specific needs, preferences and communication style to ensure they receive the most appropriate care when moving between services. This is good practice to help ensure people who are less able to communicate their needs are supported to do so.

The office staff communicated well with external health and social care professionals. Staff told us they had good relationships with external health and social carer professionals, and this was confirmed by 2 social workers who provided feedback to us during the assessment.

Staff were positive about their contact with office staff. They told us they felt supported, and the office staff were responsive.

The provider did not always support people to manage their health and wellbeing, so people could not always maximise their independence, choice and control. Staff did not always support people to live healthier lives, or where possible, reduce their future needs for care and support.

We could not be assured people were receiving consistent support to improve their health and well-being as their needs had not been reviewed regularly. People were asked about their views on their health and their level of motivation to make changes if required, but no clear structure was in place to identify outcomes they could be supported to achieve. The management team did tell us people would be signposted where required, but no evidence was provided to demonstrate this had happened in practice.

Staff were not trained to recognise a decline in someone’s health and to escalate issues to the office. Staff knowledge in this area was not assessed during induction, refresher training and during direct observations.

The provider did not always routinely monitor people’s care and treatment to continuously improve it. They did not always ensure that outcomes were positive and consistent, or that they met the expectations of people themselves.

There was a lack of effective processes in place to monitor the service. A new action plan had been created during the assessment with new monitoring processes implemented in May 2025.

Reviews with people had commenced in January 2025 and work was ongoing to ensure people’s needs were being met and that people were satisfied with the care provided.

The provider told people about their rights around consent and respected these when delivering person-centred care and treatment.

Staff received training and policies were in place to support compliance with the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act.

Care plans needed more information about capacity and consent to make it clearer when people required support. Where people lacked capacity around specific decisions there was a lack of information about the least restrictive option and if best interest decisions had been considered or not.