Eden Care Services Limited

Eden Care Services is a domiciliary care service, providing the regulated activity of personal care. The service provides support to older adults, people with physical disabilities and people living with dementia. At the time of our inspection there were 89 people using the service.

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

Medicines were not always managed safely. Records relating to medicines were often incomplete or did not include the necessary information to keep people safe. The medicines audit was not robust or effective in identifying issues relating to medicines. People and their relatives were not always provided opportunity to give feedback on the service they received. We made a recommendation about this.

Risks relating to people’s individual health needs were in place, but these required more detail to keep people safe. People spoke positively of the staff approach and received care from consistent and familiar staff. Staff were recruited to the service safely and people were safeguarded from the risk of abuse.

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.

There was a positive culture at the service, and staff felt valued and listened to. People and their relatives spoke highly of the staff approach and attitude of the management team. The service evidenced continuous learning and development, as well as effective partnership working.

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

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published 6 December 2017).

Why we inspected

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

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Eden Care Services Limited on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Enforcement and Recommendations

We have identified breaches in relation to safe care and treatment and good governance at this inspection. We made a recommendation regarding capturing people’s feedback.

Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.

Follow up

We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.

This service was previously in operation at a different address. This is the first inspection from this address and under the current methodology.

Eden Care Services Limited provides personal care and support to people living in their own homes. They operate from premises located in Macclesfield town centre.

There was a registered manager in post. 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.

This inspection focussed on the domiciliary care provided by Eden Care Services. At the time of the inspection the service offered support to 88 people, however only 79 people were in receipt of the regulated activity ‘personal care’.

Risk assessments were not detailed and did not always contain sufficient information to ensure that the risks to people using the service were minimised. There were not always clear plans to instruct what action staff should take to reduce the risks to people receiving a service. However, we saw that care staff often liaised with office staff and the relevant professionals where concerns were noted. The registered manager agreed to review the risk assessments.

There were sufficient staff to complete the scheduled visits for each person and people told us that they had not had any missed calls. They told us that generally staff arrived on time and they were contacted if there were going to be any delays. Visit times were recorded in the daily records and these were checked by the keyworkers. People knew to contact the office with any problems. No concerns had been made to the provider about missed calls.

Arrangements were in place to protect people from the risk of abuse. We spoke to staff about their understanding of safeguarding and they were able to describe what action to take if they suspected that someone was at risk of abuse or they saw signs of abuse. People using the service reported that they felt safe and their relatives told us that they were confident that their family members were safe and supported by the staff of Eden Care Services.

We looked at recruitment files for the most recently appointed staff members to check that effective recruitment procedures had been completed. We found that appropriate checks had been made to ensure that they were suitable to work with vulnerable adults.

The care files that we looked at contained the detailed relevant information that staff needed to care for the person including their preferences. It was clear through discussions with staff that they knew the people they were supporting well and they were able to provide consistent care to people and build up positive relationships.

Discussions with staff members identified that they felt happy and supported in their roles. They told us that the registered manager was supportive and they felt that they could contact her and the office staff at any time.

The service had a quality assurance system in place, however not all these checks were recorded, such as medication audits. The registered manager devised a form to capture these checks during the course of our inspection. The registered manager also sought feedback from the people who used the service via monthly face to face checks carried out by keyworkers and spot checks were carried out on staff to ensure standards of care were maintained.