During an assessment under our new approach
Date of assessment: 4 June 2026. Homelium West Sussex is a homecare agency providing personal care to people in their own homes. This was the first assessment of the service. At the time of our assessment, 53 people were receiving the regulated activity of personal care. People and relatives generally felt safe and described staff as kind, caring and respectful. One relative said, "The staff are lovely and they keep [person] safe and look after them very well.” People valued receiving support from staff who knew them well and understood their preferences and routines. Several people and relatives told us staff promoted people's independence, respected their choices and often went above and beyond to provide support. Assessments were completed before care started, and people and those important to them were involved in planning their care and support. Staff promoted people’s dignity and worked with professionals when people’s needs changed. However, some people experienced late or rushed visits, did not always receive support from familiar staff and staff were not always given sufficient travel time between visits. Care plans, risk assessments and medicines records were not always accurate, complete, person-specific or up to date. Safeguarding concerns, accidents and incidents were not consistently recorded, monitored or analysed to identify learning, mitigate risks and drive improvement. Governance and quality assurance systems were not effective and had not identified or addressed all the shortfalls found during the assessment. This included insufficient oversight of care planning, risk management, medicines records, safeguarding processes and compliance with the provider’s conditions of registration. The service was in breach of legal regulation in relation to good governance. There was no registered manager in post at the time of the assessment, although an application was in progress. Following our feedback, the provider responded proactively and submitted a detailed action plan setting out the action taken and planned to address the concerns identified. The provider had already begun implementing improvements, including enhanced oversight, auditing and monitoring arrangements. However, these changes were at an early stage and the provider had not yet demonstrated that they were fully implemented, effective or embedded within the service.