21 September 2022
During an inspection looking at part of the service
The Care Worker Agency is a domiciliary care agency providing care to people living in their own homes, so they can live as independently as possible. At the time of our inspection the service was supporting 42 people with personal care. Some of the people supported had a learning disability or autism.
Not everyone who used 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.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. We considered this guidance as there were people using the service who have a learning disability and or who are autistic.
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.
People’s risk assessments were completed in accordance with their assessed needs. Staff were happy with their rostered hours, and people told us staff mostly came on time. If staff were late, they would receive communication from the office. People received their required medications on time by staff who were trained to do this.
Quality assurance procedures were in place and had highlighted where improvement was needed. Staff told us they felt they were able to speak up to the registered manager and the provider whenever they needed to. Team meetings took place, and people were routinely asked for written and verbal feedback about their experience of The Care Worker Agency.
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 (report published 3 August 2018).
Why we inspected
We received concerns in relation to risk management and closed cultures. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only. For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.
The overall rating for the service has remained good.
We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from this concern. Please see the safe and well led sections of this full report.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for The Care Worker Agency on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.