About the service: This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes and flats in the community. It provides a service to younger and older adults. At the time of the inspection nine people were using the service.

People’s experience of using this service:

• People felt safe and staff understood their responsibilities to safeguard people from the risk of abuse.

• Risks associated with people’s care and support needs were managed safely and reviewed regularly.

• People were supported to have enough to eat and drink to maintain their health and wellbeing.

• People were supported to access relevant health and social care professionals. People were supported with their medicines in a safe way.

• Safe staff recruitment practices were followed. There were enough staff to ensure people received care and support as planned. Staff were trained and supported to carry out their roles.

• Staff demonstrated their understanding of the Mental Capacity Act, 2005. Staff gained people’s consent before providing personal care and support.

• People were encouraged to make decisions about how all aspects of their care and support was provided. People were involved in the planning and review of their care. Support plans were person centred and updated regularly.

• People’s privacy and dignity was protected and promoted.

• People were encouraged to remain independent, where possible. Staff supported people to develop new skills, access the wider community and meaningful activities of interest to them.

• People knew how to raise a concern or make a complaint. There was a system in place to respond to complaints and advocacy support was available.

• There was an open and a positive culture where the registered manager and staff communicated well and people’s needs were met.

• People, their relatives and staff were given opportunity to give feedback and influence how the service develops.

• There was a system in place to monitor the quality of service and action was taken where areas for improvement had been found. Any lessons learnt from incidents were shared with the staff to try to avoid future incidents.

• The registered manager and staff team worked well with professionals and organisations that promoted people’s quality of life.

• The service met the characteristics for a rating of “good” in all key questions.

• More information about our inspection finding is in the full report.

Rating at last inspection: We inspected the service but it was not rated (5 June 2018).

Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection based on the rating of the last inspection.

Ebenezer (Stone of Help) Ltd is a ‘domiciliary care service.’ People receive personal care as a single package under one contractual agreement. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) regulates the care provided, and this was looked at during this inspection. The service provides personal care for older people and younger adults. This was the first inspection of the service. It was a comprehensive inspection. We were unable to rate the agency as there was not sufficient information available to us to fully assess how safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led the service was.

The inspection took place on 17 April 2018. The inspection was announced because we wanted to make sure that the registered manager was available to conduct the inspection.

A registered manager was in post. This is a condition of the registration of 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 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

Staff recruitment checks were not comprehensively in place to protect people from receiving personal care from unsuitable staff. Risk assessments were not comprehensively in place to protect people from risks to their health and welfare.

The person and their relative told us they thought the service ensured safe personal care was provided by staff. Staff had been trained in safeguarding (protecting people from abuse) and understood their responsibilities in this area. Policies set out that when a safeguarding incident occurred management needed to take appropriate action by referring to the relevant safeguarding agency. The registered manager was aware these incidents, if they occurred, needed to be reported to us, as legally required.

They also told us that medicines had been prompted so that the person could take their medicine safely and on time, to their health needs, though records had not always evidenced this had happened.

Staff had largely received training to ensure they had skills and knowledge to meet people's needs, though training on other relevant issues had not yet been provided.

Staff understood their responsibilities under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) to allow, as much as possible, people to have effective choices about how they lived their lives. Staff were aware to ask people’s consent when they provided personal care. A capacity assessment was not in place though this was carried out after the inspection to agree any restrictions on choice in the person's best interests.

The person and their relative told us that staff were friendly, kind, positive and caring. They said they had been involved in making decisions about how and what personal care was needed to meet any identified needs.

Care plans were individual to the people using the service, which helped to ensure that their needs were met.

The person and their relative were confident that any concerns they had would be properly followed up. They were satisfied with how the service was run.

Staff members said they had been fully supported in their work by the registered manager.

The registered manager had not yet carried out comprehensive audits in order to check that the service was meeting people's needs and to ensure people were provided with a quality service.