About the service Ethica Care is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to people living in their own homes. At the time of our inspection there were 65 people using the service.
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 received some feedback about instances of staff lateness and timekeeping concerns.
Safeguarding processes were in place to help safeguard people from abuse. Risks associated with people’s care had been assessed and guidance was in place for staff to follow.
People received person centred care which met their needs. People told us staff were caring and considerate.
People and their representatives were generally happy with the support they received from this service and were involved in the planning of their care and given opportunities to feedback on the service they received.
Staff were suitably trained, skilled and experienced and had undergone the required recruitment checks.
Processes were in place to ensure people received their medicines safely and as prescribed.
There were procedures in place to respond to complaints. The provider had investigated and responded promptly to any concerns received. The service learned from incidents and mistakes and made continuous improvements.
Auditing and quality assurance processes were in place to enable the service to identify where improvement was needed.
The provider worked in partnership with healthcare services and professionals to plan and deliver an effective service.
There were some good person-centred initiatives, examples included delivering food to the local food bank and providing blankets to people using the service.
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 the service under the previous provider was good, published on 15 May 2019.
Why we inspected
We received concerns in relation to safeguarding, missed calls and complaints. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe, responsive and well-led only.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.
We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from these concerns.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Ethica Care on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Recommendations
We made a recommendation about monitoring staff deployment.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.