Care Companions Limited

Care Companions a domiciliary care agency which is registered to provide personal care and support to people in their own homes. The service is registered to provide support to older people or younger adults living with dementia, mental health support needs, a learning disability or autistic spectrum disorder and a physical disability. At the time of our inspection the service was supporting 6 people. 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.

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.

At the time of the inspection, the location did not provide care or support for anyone with a learning disability or an autistic person. However, we assessed the care provision under Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, as it is registered as a specialist service for this population group.

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

Right Support:

People and their relatives were satisfied with the care and support provided and told us they had no complaints. People were mostly independent with taking their medicines, where support was provided, records were not always clearly completed. There were enough staff employed to undertake care calls and support people's care needs. People were supported by staff who understood their needs and were trained in recognising the signs of abuse. The provider had policies and procedures in place to support staff in their role. Staff supported people in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

Right Care:

The provider completed recruitment checks to ensure staff were safe and suitable to work with people. Some of the checks were not clearly demonstrated within staff records. However, people received personalised care and support from staff that understood their needs. People’s privacy, dignity and independence was respected.

Right Culture:

Systems and processes to monitor the service were not always effective to support staff to work safely consistently. The provider was in the process of developing and implementing quality check systems to monitor the service provided and to check people received the quality of service they expected. Records were not always sufficiently detailed to clearly reflect safety risks to people and to help ensure a consistent approach by staff in managing these risks. Staff received an induction to the service and completed ongoing training to ensure they were safe, suitable, and had the necessary skills to provide effective care.

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

Rating at last inspection

This service was registered with us on 23 May 2022 and this is the first inspection.

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.