Community Response Team West Central is owned by Hampshire County Council. The agency is primarily a short term assessment and reablement service for people coming out of hospital. Sixty-two people were receiving personal care at the time of this inspection.

The service has a registered manager. 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 received a lot of positive feedback about the service, the managers and the staff. People and their relatives felt the agency supported them in a kind and caring manner to meet their needs.

People and their relatives were involved in the care they received, which was personalised to their individual needs.

Staff understood how to identify, report and manage any concerns related to people’s safety and welfare. There were systems and processes in place to protect people from harm, including how medicines were managed.

Safe recruitment practices were followed and appropriate checks had been undertaken, which made sure only suitable staff were employed to provide care for people. There were sufficient numbers of experienced staff deployed to meet people’s needs.

Staff were supported to provide appropriate care to people because they were trained and supervised. There was an induction, training and development programme, which supported staff to gain relevant knowledge and skills.

Staff assisted people to obtain advice and support from other health professionals to maintain and improve their health or when their needs changed.

The service was responsive to people’s needs and staff listened to what they said. Systems were in place to help ensure any concerns or complaints were responded to appropriately.

There was an open and inclusive culture within the service and the registered manager provided leadership to the staff team.

We carried out a themed inspection looking at domiciliary care services. We asked people to tell us what it was like to receive services from this home care agency as part of a targeted inspection programme of domiciliary care agencies with particular regard to how people's dignity was upheld and how they could make choices about their care. The inspection team was led by a CQC inspector joined by an Expert by Experience, who has experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of service.

We used telephone interviews and home visits to people who use the service and to their main carers (a relative or friend) to gain views about the service.

We visited three people in their own home as part of this review and spoke with them about their experiences of the support they received. We spoke with the manager at the time of our visit to the office, a team leader and also with three care workers after the home visits. We spoke with twenty-two people who received a service from this agency over the telephone.

All except one of the people we spoke with gave positive feedback about the service and said that care staff respected their choices about the way that care was delivered. All of the people we spoke with said that they felt safe using this service and knew what to do if they had any concerns. They had all been visited by a senior care worker or team leader to review the care they were receiving and to check if there were any issues.

The people we spoke with confirmed that the care workers supported and encouraged them to maintain as much independence as possible. They told us that care staff had asked them how they liked to be addressed and had acted in accordance with their responses. They were confident that staff had the appropriate knowledge and skills to meet their needs and described the care workers as professional, well mannered, thoughtful, friendly and caring.

One person said “I get the help that I want and it’s all going well”. Another person said that the care staff were all “very friendly and listen to you”. These comments reflected the overall feedback we received from people using the service.

We spoke with 12 people who used the service, including visiting four people in their own homes accompanied by a senior member of the care staff. The other eight people we spoke with over the telephone. We looked at care records for seven people. We also spoke with the Registered Manager and five members of staff during two visits to the agency’s office. We saw that accurate and appropriate records were maintained and that suitable arrangements were in place for supporting people with medicines. There were effective staff recruitment and selection processes.

People’s comments about the service were overall very positive and expressed a high level of satisfaction with the care they received. One person told us the agency “choose well when they choose their staff”. Another commented on the “efficiency, care, humour, punctuality and professionalism” of the staff. One person remarked that the care workers who assisted them to take a bath “didn’t make me feel uncomfortable at all”. Another told us: “All the staff that call are a fine bunch. One follows on from another and it’s the same care. Everyone reads the care plan”. Another person said that all of their care workers had “without exception been really good. I can’t speak highly enough of the quality of care”.These comments reflected the overall feedback we received from people using the service.