Cheshire East Council Reablement and Shared Lives Services are based in the Sandbach area and provides a ‘Reablement’ service, which provides personal care and support to people living in their own homes and a ‘Shared Life’ service. Shared Lives offer a personalised service to vulnerable adults, aged over 18 years, providing care within a family setting so that they can live in the community as independently as possible. CQC does not regulate premises used for these services. This inspection looked at people’s personal care and support.

The care service has been developed and designed in line with the values that underpin the Registering the Right Support and other best practice guidance. These values include choice, promotion of independence and inclusion. People with learning disabilities and autism being supported they can live as ordinary a life as any citizen.

This was an announced inspection which took place over two days on 22 and 23 October 2018. The inspection was carried out by an adult social care inspector and an ‘Expert by Experience’. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

This was the first inspection of the service following its new registration in July 2016.

The service had registered managers in post for both the Reablement and Shared Live services. The registered manager for Reablement was on secondment at he time of our inspection and a temporary manager was supporting the service. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

We found good and consistent service delivery and support for people in both the Reablement and Shared Lives services. Managers had developed systems to assess and monitor the service ongoing and the overall governance of the service was established and effective. Managers could evidence a series of quality assurance processes. There was a clear management hierarchy and we saw that new ideas and service improvements were effectively developed and communicated.

We rated the service as Good.

We contacted carers who supported people in the Shared Lives service and we also spoke with people who were receiving support in their own homes from the Reablement service. The feedback we received evidenced people were getting good support. External professionals involved directly or in commissioning people’s care also gave positive feedback which gave further evidence of a good service.

We found medicines were administered safely. Medication administration records [MARs] were completed in line with the services policies and good practice guidance. We pointed out some minor recording anomalies which were promptly addressed by managers.

There were arrangements in place for checking people’s care environment to help ensure this was safe. These arrangements included regular checks and audits by senior members of the care team or ‘Care Managers’ – social workers directly supporting people in Shared Lives.

People using the service, relatives, professionals and staff told us they felt the culture of the organisation was fair and open and supported good care and support for people using the service.

People we spoke with said they felt safe with the staff who supported them. We were told that if any issues arose they were addressed by the managers.

We saw that any risks to care provision had been assessed and there were fully developed plans in place to help ensure they were kept safe. Staff were arranged to support this depending on each person’s needs. There were sufficient staff available to support people.

We looked at how staff were recruited and the processes to ensure staff were suitable to work with vul