During an assessment under our new approach
Date of Assessment: 1 April 2026 to 15 April 2026.
The service is a home care agency, providing personal care and support to people living in and around Stockport. At the time of this inspection, 10 people were receiving personal care from the service. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided. We carried out this comprehensive assessment in response to concerns raised and the length of time since the last inspection.
We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed autistic people and people with a learning disability respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. At the time of the assessment, the service was not supporting any autistic people or people with a learning disability, but we saw no evidence the provider had regard to ‘Right support, right care, right culture’.
We found concerns relating to unsafe medicines management and administration. We were not assured people had received their medicines as prescribed, and staff had not received robust training and competency checks. We raised a safeguarding alert with the local authority in relation to the risks identified relating to medicines.
We were not assured people’s individual risks were being safely managed. This included safe moving and handling of people, health and safety risks to people and ensuring care records were up to date. We raised a safeguarding alert with the local authority in relation to the risks identified to people’s individual risk management.
We identified concerns with the provision of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced staff to ensure they could meet people’s care and treatment needs. We were not assured staff had received sufficient and appropriate training and competency checks to ensure the delivery of safe care and treatment, and that staff had received effective support, supervision and appraisal.
We found concerns with safe recruitment practices to ensure only suitable, fit and proper persons were employed to provide the regulated activity of personal care. Robust and appropriate recruitment checks had not always been carried out. We shared our concerns with the local authority.
There was a lack of oversight of operations of the service and concerns we found had not been identified and/or actioned to ensure safe and effective care. Information given to us during the inspection period was not always accurate. Information about the service, staff and people we requested was not always available and was not always supplied in a timely way or not supplied at all. We were not assured statutory notifications were being submitted as per requirements. There was a lack of oversight, analysis and investigation of any incidents and potential safeguarding concerns and we were not assured relevant action was being taken to mitigate future risks to people.
However, we found staff were kind and caring when providing care and support and knew people’s needs well. We received no concerns in relation to staff from people and they shared positive feedback around how they promoted people’s independence and choice.
We identified breaches in relation to individual risk management, medicines management, staffing, safe recruitment practices and governance of the service.
In instances where CQC has begun a process of regulatory action, we may publish this information on our website after any representations and/or appeals have been concluded, if the action has been taken forward. We have also asked the provider for an action plan in response to some of the concerns found at this assessment.
This service is being placed in special measures. The purpose of special measures is to ensure services providing inadequate care make significant improvements. Special measures provide a framework within which we use our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of the care they provide.