About the service Aware Care Limited is a domiciliary care agency which provides personal care to people in their own homes. At the time of our inspection there were 54 people using the service.
Not everyone who used the service received personal care. 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. Fifty-Two people were receiving a regulated activity from the provider.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Staff training was not always up to date. However, we found no evidence this impacted on people and the registered manager was working promptly to improve training compliance.
We have made a recommendation the provider continues to promote full compliance with training.
People spoke positively about the care they received from the staff team and the registered manager.
People were protected from the risk of abuse by staff who were knowledgeable about safeguarding. One staff member said, “We protect vulnerable people from harm and abuse.” People’s risks were appropriately assessed, and staff had clear guidance to manage identified risks. The provider followed safe recruitment practices, using a comprehensive values-based recruitment process. People received the support they needed to manage their medicines safely. Staff followed infection control practices effectively. One person said, “They [staff] wear their PPE just like when it was COVID times.” Accidents and incidents were appropriately reviewed, and lessons learnt were shared with staff.
People and staff spoke positively about the culture of the service and the registered manager. Every person and relative we spoke with knew the registered manager by name. One relative said, “It all just seems very efficient, the whole organisation, we’ve been very lucky to have found them.” The registered manager and staff understood the responsibilities of their role. The provider had quality assurance processes in place to review the quality performance and drive service improvement. Audits were robust, including frequent spot checks on the care provided by staff.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection and update
The last rating for this service was requires improvement (14 September 2019) and there were breaches of regulation. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.
Why we inspected
We carried out an announced focused inspection of this service on 6 August 2019. A breach of legal requirements was found. The provider has now evidenced what they have done to improve.
We undertook this focused inspection to confirm they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions Safe and Well-led which contain those requirements.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.
The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to good based on the findings of this inspection.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Aware Care Limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.