- Homecare service
Churchview Care Services (Taunton)
Assessment report published 30 April 2025
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Churchview Care Services (Taunton) is a domiciliary care and supported living service providing personal care to people with learning disabilities and autistic people living in their own homes. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) only inspects where people receive personal care. At the time of assessment, the service supported 11 people with the regulated activity personal care. This assessment was carried out in response to concerns we had received relating to staffing, safeguarding, risk management, medicines and governance. During this assessment we found the service had made improvements and was no longer in breach of regulations, however further improvements were still required. We carried out our onsite assessment on 6 November 2024 and 19 November 2024, off site activity started on 5 November 2024 and ended on 20 December 2024. We have assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. We spoke to staff, people using the service and their relatives. We received feedback from a health professional. We carried out observations during the assessment visits. Relatives raised concerns with us about the service and lack of consistent management at service level, the provider had addressed this. The registered manager had been in post since 2022 and was now solely responsible for overseeing Churchview Care services (Taunton). The registered manager and provider acknowledged there had been concerns with the service in the past. They were focused on learning from this and moving the service forward, we saw evidence of the service’s improvement. At our last inspection the service was rated requires improvement. We have not changed the rating at this assessment.
People's experience of this service
We received mixed feedback from people’s relatives relating to the care and support their loved ones had received. Relatives commented on the high turnover of staff, inconsistent management and lack of effective communication, however CQC were shown evidence of action taken to improve cultures and practice since the last inspection.
People who were able to give us feedback commented positively about the staff and support they received. During our visits to people’s homes, we observed good interactions between people and staff.
We received mixed feedback from staff, most of the comments we received were positive. However, some staff commented about the lack of consistent management. The provider had already addressed this concern by making the registered manager solely responsible for overseeing Churchview Care Services (Taunton) and they were actively recruiting to vacant senior roles.
There had been improvements since our last inspection to people’s risk management plans, however we identified there were still further improvements required. There were systems in place to manage people’s medicines safely.There had been a high turnover of staff, however this had stabilised, and the service had a consistent staff team available to support people.
People told us they felt safe. We received mixed feedback from people’s relatives on how safe they felt their loved ones were. Staff knew how to recognise and report abuse, they told us they would not hesitate to report any concerns to the management team or externally if required.
People’s relatives had opportunities to feedback their views about the service. However, they felt their views had not always been acted upon.The systems in place to monitor the quality and safety of the service people received had improved, however these needed to be embedded and sustained over time.
Although the systems in place to support learning had not always been effective, it was evident from our conversations with the registered manager and provider that they had learned from past experiences and were making improvements in the service.