Archived: A1 Medical & General Ltd

A1 Medical & General Ltd is a domiciliary care agency providing support for people in their own homes. Not everyone using the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided. At the time of our inspection there were 2 people using the service.

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

Right Support:

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. We made a recommendation to the provider about recording mental capacity decisions. People were supported by staff to pursue their interests. Staff supported people to make decisions following best practice in decision making. Staff communicated with people in ways that met their needs. Staff supported people to play an active role in maintaining their own health and wellbeing.

Right Care:

Staff promoted equality and diversity in their support for people. They understood people's cultural needs and provided appropriate care to meet people’s needs. People received kind and compassionate care. Staff protected and respected people's privacy and dignity. They understood and responded to their individual needs. People could take part in activities and pursue interests that were tailored to them. The service gave people opportunities to try new activities that enhanced and enriched their lives. We made a recommendation to the provider on strengthening the system they use to check the delivery of the service.

Right Culture:

People were kept safe from avoidable harm because staff knew them well and understood how to protect them from abuse. The service worked well with other agencies to do so. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it. Staff could recognise signs when people experienced emotional distress and knew how to support them to minimise the need to restrict their freedom to keep them safe.

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

Rating at last inspection and update

The last rating for the service at the previous premises was good, published on 31 August 2019.

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.

This was an ‘inspection using remote technology’. This means we did not visit the office location and instead used technology such as electronic file sharing to gather information, and video and phone calls to engage with people using the service as part of this performance review and assessment.