Archived: Active Support Service Limited

When we visited Active Support 25 November 2013 we found that although most people using the service told us they were happy with the service we identified areas that required improvement. These related to obtaining consent from people using the service; assessments and care planning; safeguarding people from abuse; pre recruitment checks and assessing and monitoring the quality of the service.

When we visited 11 March 2014 we found that improvements had been made to the above areas.

We found assessments of people's ability to understand and consent to specific decisions had been assessed and where people were not able to give consent decisions had been made on the person's behalf in their best interests. We found assessments and care plans had been updated and contained all of the information staff needed to care for and support people appropriately. We found improvements to how people were safeguarded from abuse and harm. We found the necessary pre recruitment checks had been carried out.

We also found that improvements had been made to the systems for monitoring the service.

We spoke with two people who used the service and three relatives. One person told us ' The staff are nice and kind' another person told us, 'Staff are very good and always arrive on time." A relative told us the service was 'excellent' saying they had 'no concerns at all'.

We found that although people were happy with the service care records did not always contain all the information staff needed to care for people safely and appropriately.

We found that not all the necessary pre recruitment checks had been carried out to ensure that staff were able to work safely with children and adults who may be vulnerable.

We found that the manager and team leaders carried about telephone checks to ask people using the service for their feedback. Records showed that they also carried out visits to people's homes when staff were there to check whether staff were punctual and to observe staff working with people. We saw that people were also able to give feedback on the service via an annual satisfaction survey.

The manager explained that team leaders carried out audits on care records. The audits undertaken had not identified the issues that we found with assessments and care plans and had not led to these areas being addressed.