Companion Homecare

Updated 4 April 2023

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection was undertaken by 1 inspector.

Service and service type

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because it is a small service and we needed to be sure that the provider or registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection.

Inspection activity started on 13 March 2023 and ended on 14 March 2023.

What we did before inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. We sought feedback from the local authority and professionals who work with the service. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with 8 people who used the service and 7 members of staff including the registered manager and care staff.

We looked at a range of records including 3 care plans, risk assessments and medicine records. We looked at rotas, policies and procedures and audits. We looked at 6 sets of staff recruitment records who had been employed since the last inspection.

Updated 4 April 2023

About the service

Companion Homecare provides personal care to people in their own homes. The service is based in Preston and also provides support to people living in the Morecambe area. 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. At the time of our inspection, 85 people were receiving personal care.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

We have made a recommendation about recruitment processes, although people were supported by enough staff that were trained appropriately for the role. Improvements were required in the recruitment processes. People were supported to take their medicines safely and were protected from the risk of abuse. Staff were aware of infection control guidance and people were protected from the risk of incidents being repeated.

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it. We considered this guidance as there were people using the service who were autistic.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

People benefitted from a positive culture within the service and staff enjoyed their jobs. The registered manager assessed risks and took steps to minimise them. The registered manager communicated well with people, their relatives and staff and encouraged further learning and development of staff to improve the service.

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 (published 3 November 2022). The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve.

At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.

At our last inspection we made a recommendation about submitting statutory notifications and recruitment. The provider had acted regarding notifications, however further actions were required around recruitment.

Why we inspected

The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about recruitment. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks. Although we found no evidence of harm, the concerns were partly upheld and the provider agreed to take actions to mitigate, which we will review at the next inspection.

Please see the safe and well-led sections of this full report.

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 Companion Homecare on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.