About the service: This inspection took place on 12 and 13 March 2019. Careline Homecare (Tameside) is a domiciliary care agency and is part of the City and County Healthcare Group. Personal care is provided to people in their own homes in the community. At the time of this inspection, 296 people used the service for personal care, including people living at Hurst Meadow extra care housing scheme.

People’s experience of using this service:

¿ At our last inspection of this service we identified breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 with regards to staffing, responding to complaints and good governance. At this inspection, we found improvements had been made and the service was no longer in breach of Regulations.

¿The service had appropriate systems and procedures in place which sought to protect people who used the service from abuse. Staff demonstrated a working knowledge of local safeguarding procedures and how to raise a concern.

¿ We saw missed and late visits were analysed and detailed the circumstance why the missed or late visit had occurred. The management team used this information to reduce the likihood of it happening again.

¿ Recruitment and selection of staff was robust with safe recruitment practices in place. This included checks with the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). This helped to ensure potential

employees were suitable to work with vulnerable people.

¿ Where support with medicines was part of an assessed care need, these were ordered, stored, administered, recorded and disposed of safely and correctly. Staff were trained in the safe administration of medicines and kept relevant records.

¿ Accidents and incidents were appropriately recorded and included details of preventive strategies used by the service to reduce the likelihood of such events occurring in the future.

¿ The staff induction programme was robust and included mandatory training and opportunities for shadowing of more experienced staff.

¿ Services were delivered in line with the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and staff sought consent prior to providing care and offered people choices to encourage people to make their own decisions.

¿ People and their relatives told us they were happy with the care provided. People told us staff treated them with dignity and respect and promoted their independence

¿ People engaged with an initial assessment and were involved in the planning of care. Regular reviews were conducted with people, their relatives and where appropriate, other professionals.

¿ People received appropriate information, including details about the complaints procedure. People told us they were confident that if they were required to make a complaint, the management would respond and resolve their issue promptly.

¿ We found there were systems in place to monitor the quality of the service provided to people, which ensured good governance.

¿ The service was well managed. The culture and ethos was one of openness and transparency.

Rating at last inspection: ‘Requires Improvement’ (Report published 06 August 2018).

Why we inspected: This inspection was brought forward due to information of concern that had been received by CQC in the weeks leading up to this inspection. These issues are addressed in the well-led section of the full report. At this inspection, we found sufficient evidence to support the service had improved its overall rating to ‘Good.’

Follow up: We will continue to monitor this service and plan to inspect in line with our inspection schedule for those services rated good.

This inspection took place at the service offices on 11, 13 and 26 June 2018. We gave the provider 48 hours’ notice as we needed to be sure that a manager would be available to participate in the inspection.

Careline (Tameside) is a domiciliary care agency and is part of the City and County Healthcare Group. They provide personal care to people in their own homes in the community in the Ashton under Lyne area. At this inspection there were 250 people using the service for personal care, including people living in Hurst Meadow assisted living and extra care scheme. This was the first inspection of the service since they re-registered with the current provider on 23 December 2016.

During this inspection we identified breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 with regards to; staffing, responding to complaints and good governance. We are considering our enforcement options.

People who used the service did not always receive their planned visits. Some people received visits for personal care that were much shorter than the commissioned planned visit. We did not find any evidence that people had been harmed because of these issues but could not be confident they were provided with safe care.

The service had a robust system for recording and responding to complaints but we found not all complaints had been recorded.

Governance and audit systems were in place but had not been fully utilised. We found the service had not identified the concerns we found at the inspection. This meant there was not an effective way of monitoring if care had been provided or concerns responded to.

Some people using the service told us they felt safe. Safeguarding means; protecting people from the risk of harm and abuse. Staff were aware of what might be a safeguarding concern and how to report this.

Staff received appropriate training. People who used the service told us staff were well trained and knew what they were doing. Staff received regular supervision from senior staff.

People who used the service praised the caring attitude of the staff and told us staff made sure their dignity and privacy were respected when receiving personal care. People’s cultural backgrounds and preferences were identified and staff were aware of any support people needed to maintain these.

People received person centred care, their needs had been fully assessed and care plans had been developed to ensure their needs were met as they preferred. We saw records in the daily care notes that showed care staff were following the care plans.

The service provided information packs for staff and people who used the service that identified the core values and expectations of the organisation.

The service was committed to learning and improving and was attending provider forums to share knowledge and experience with others.