Prime Care Support Limited

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

People were mostly positive about the support they had from the staff team. Staff were described as kind and caring. However, some people and relatives said they were not always involved in discussions about their care and support. Staff enjoyed working with and supporting people and spoke about them kindly with dignity and respect.

This service scored 75 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

People told us staff were kind and caring. People’s comments included, ‘‘[Staff] are very kind and always friendly. They always have a smile on their face and are very pleasant.’’ and, ‘‘[Staff] are so kind, and I cannot thank them enough.’’ Relatives told us, ‘‘[Staff] are really kind. They listen to us and respect our wishes.’’ and, ‘‘[Staff] are kind and seem to really want what is best for [family member]. They are always having a chat and a laugh together.’’

Staff spoke passionately about how they supported people, and it was clear they placed a lot of importance on ensuring they were kind and compassionate in their approach. The registered manager and provider spoke with us about how they kept people at the centre of any decisions they made. They shared several examples with us of how people had been supported and the positive impact this had on them.

Professionals did not give us specific feedback about how kind staff were. However, they did tell us staff supported people well and in line with the advice they gave.

People told us staff who supported them on a regular basis knew them well as individuals. People’s comments included, ‘‘[Staff] genuinely care about my wellbeing and what is important to me.’’ and, ‘‘My regular carers are excellent and know me very well. Even if I have a new person come and support me, they make an effort to help me how I like to be helped.’’ A relative said, ‘‘When we have a consistent staff member who know [family member], they truly do understand what they want and how best to support them.’’

Staff spoke with us about the people they supported, and it was clear they knew them well as individuals. The management team told us how they focused on people’s individual needs from the assessment process and encouraged people to let them know specifically how they wanted to be supported in line with their likes, dislikes and preferences.

People’s care plans were not always detailed in relation to their individual support needs. For example, care plans recorded people’s individual needs such as how they communicated or how they liked to spend their time. However, there was then a lack of detail about how staff could best support them with these individual needs. We shared specific examples of this with the registered manager who started taking action to update people’s care plans. People’s daily records were also not always completed in detail by staff. This made it harder to see how people were being supported as individuals. The registered manager told us they would hold workshops with staff to support them to understand the importance of completing records in more detail. Some care plans were also detailed with regards to individual needs. The providers assessment process focused in on individuals likes, dislikes and preferences.

People gave us mixed feedback about whether they were given choices in in relation to their support and how they were supported to be independent. One person said, ‘‘[Staff] just come in and crack on. Do what they need to do and then off they go. Don’t really offer me any choices.’’ A relative said, ‘‘I wouldn’t be so sure as to how much choice we are given in the day to day running of things. We were never really asked to feed in to care plans or anything like that.’’ A person explained, ‘‘I would like to do more for myself, but [staff] are always so rushed so they end up doing it for me.’’ Other people gave us more positive feedback. For example, one person told us, ‘‘[Staff] ask me what I like to eat and drink every day.’’ A relative said, ‘‘Thanks to the support of the carers [family member] can do more for themselves now which is really important to them.’’

Staff spoke with us about how they prompted choice and independence when they supported people. They explained how they would use methods such as giving people visual choices to help promote people making their own decisions. They also spoke about the methods they used to support people to be independent and how they enabled people to do as much as they could themselves before stepping in to support. The registered manager explained how choice and independence were important principles of the support staff gave to people and they regularly discussed this with staff in supervisions and team meetings.

Processes were in place to support people to have choices and to be independent. People’s care plans gave information about how to support people with their choices and how to support them to be independent. The management team encouraged staff to discuss how best to support people with each other to help promote helping people to make choices and be independent in the most effective way.

People and their relatives spoke about how staff were responsive to their needs. One person said, ‘‘[Staff] have to help me with what I need but if I need anything else they always do that too. They are every helpful.’’ Another person explained how staff had stayed behind and changed their plans to support them when they needed support from emergency services. A relative told us, ‘‘[Staff] are very good really. I know [family member] is safe with them and staff would do anything they need on a day-to-day basis if they needed something extra.’’

Staff told us how they prioritised what people needed when they supported them. They gave us examples of when they supported people with care tasks outside of what they normally supported them with or worked together to stay on at a care visit to ensure people had the right support. The registered manager spoke with us and gave us several examples about how they supported people if they had quick and sudden changes in their support needs.

Staff told us they felt well supported by the management team and the provider. They said they had formal supervisions and meetings to discuss how things were going in their job roles but could also speak to a member of the management team at any time. Staff told us they very much enjoyed working at the service.

The registered manager and provider valued the staff team and supported them in various ways. Staff had access to several services to support their wellbeing and were also invited to feedback and speak about their job roles in regular meetings and supervisions.