This inspection took place on 23 and 25 May 2017 and was announced. The provider was given 24 hours’ notice of our intended visit to ensure the registered manager or their representative would be available in the office to meet us. The inspection was conducted by one inspector.

Home Instead South Manchester is a domiciliary care service registered to provide personal care to people living in their own home. They also provide other services such as shopping, cleaning, and social support and companionship to people. Care staff employed by the service are referred to as Caregivers. Their office is located in Chorlton cum Hardy, Manchester and provides support to people living in South Manchester. At the time of our inspection the service was supporting 20 people who received the regulated activity of personal care. This was the first inspection of this service since its registration with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in May 2015.

The service had a registered manager who had been in post since May 2017. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) 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.

People and relatives told us the support they received was safe. There were recruitment processes in place to help ensure suitable staff were employed. This should help to ensure people were kept safe from harm.

Staff we spoke with knew what safeguarding meant, the types of abuse and what action they would take if they suspected abuse was taking place. Records we looked at showed all staff had received safeguarding training. This meant staff had the necessary knowledge to help protect people from harm in the event abuse was suspected.

Where required, people were helped to take their medicines. No one we spoke with identified any concerns with the service’s system of administering medicines. However we noted medication errors in the accident and incident records, not all of which had been actioned appropriately. We also saw training had been delivered to help strengthen any deficiencies staff had in this area. This intervention should help to ensure staff were adequately skilled to administer medicines in a safe way.

There was a system for reporting and recording accidents and incidents that took place within the service. We noted no formal analysis of incidents had been done. This meant the provider and registered manager did not have full oversight of these incidents which could help to understand and potentially make improvements in this area.

People using the service and their relatives told us they were satisfied with the consistency of care and that they had regular care staff supporting them. This meant people were supported by staff who understood their specific care needs.

Risk assessments contained sufficient details to help staff ensure people were kept safe from harm. People told us care staff had good hygiene practices and wore personal protective equipment when carrying out their duties. This should help to ensure that people were protected from the risk of infection.

People and their relatives had confidence in the abilities of care staff. Staff had done an induction and mandatory training to prepare them to undertake their role as care givers. The registered manager told us they were developing a system of streamlining the ongoing training programme. This should help to ensure care staff were adequately trained to do their jobs effectively.

People told us care staff always asked their permission before undertaking any task. The registered manager and care staff were knowledgeable on mental capacity. When we looked at people’s care records we saw they had signed consent to care documents. The service told us where people lacked capacity to consent to care they ensured