About the service:

Westminster Homecare (Wandsworth) is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats in the community in the London Boroughs of Wandsworth and Lambeth. At the time of our inspection approximately 100 people were using the service.

People’s experience of using this service:

¿ Most people were happy with the care they received and said it met their needs. They said they had support from a consistent group of care staff who knew them.

¿ People and their relatives said staff were polite, kind and caring towards them. Staff respected people’s dignity and privacy. They listened to people and supported their independence where possible.

¿ People were kept safe from the risk of harm. Potential risks to people and staff were assessed and managed appropriately.

¿ Staff were safely recruited to ensure they were suitable to work in a care service. People received support from trained and supervised staff who had the right skills and knowledge.

¿ People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

¿ People’s needs and individual preferences were documented in support plans that were comprehensive and kept up to date.

¿ People, their relatives and staff said they could approach the registered manager if they had any issues or concerns. There was a procedure in place which explained how people could raise concerns or complaints.

Rating at last inspection:

At our last inspection, the service was rated Good. The report was published on 15 August 2017.

Why we inspected:

This inspection was part of our scheduled plan of visiting services to check the safety and quality of care people received.

Follow up:

We will continue to monitor intelligence we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our inspection programme. If any concerning information is received we may inspect sooner.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

This inspection took place on 1 and 5 June 2017 and was announced. The provider was given 48 hours' notice because the location provides a domiciliary care service; we needed to be sure that someone would be in. This was the first inspection of the service since it registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Westminster Homecare Limited (Wandsworth) provides personal care for people in their own homes. At the time of our inspection there were approximately 230 people receiving personal care from the service in the London Borough of Wandsworth and the London Borough of Merton.

There was a registered manager at 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.

People and their relatives told us that they felt safe in the presence of care workers. They told us that staff had a caring attitude, respected their privacy and dignity and they took their preferences into consideration when supporting them with personal care or supporting them to eat and drink.

Risk assessments were completed when people first started to use the service. These included a medicine risk assessment, moving and handling risk assessment and an environmental risk assessment.

Care plans were comprehensive in scope. Care and support plans included people’s profile, their care and support plan routine and a social and physical profile. The care and support plan routine included details of tasks to be carried out at each visit and the time and length of the visit. Information in this section was written in plain English, easy to understand and provided care workers with clear steps about the tasks to be competed.

Care and support plans included details of their prescribed medicines and the level of support required. The provider had recently introduced medicine administration record (MAR) charts for care workers to clearly record the medicines that people were being supported with.

Induction for new staff lasted for five days and was based around the Care Certificate. Following the induction training, refresher training was delivered at different intervals in a number of areas relevant to care. The provider used a centralised system to monitor and maintain staff training records which gave up to date information of when training had been completed and when it was due to expire for each care worker.

The provider investigated the complaints received and where appropriate, notified the local authority and completed formal investigation reports. They also took action where needed.

People told us the service was good but that one aspect of the service that could be improved was the communication from the office team.

Quality assurance audits were in place and were effective in identifying areas of improvement. Actions were identified and assigned to members of the management team to follow up.

During the inspection we reviewed some reports for safeguarding concerns raised at the service, we found that we had not received notifications for all of these in a timely manner, as required by law.

We found a breach of the regulations in relation to notifications. You can see what action we have told the provider to take at the back of the full version of this report.