4 July 2023
During a routine inspection
About the service
Assisted Lives Birmingham is a domiciliary care service providing personal care to older people, younger people, people with learning disabilities and autism and children. At the time of the inspection there were 22 people receiving support with personal care needs.
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
Right Support:
People had not always had all of the risks associated with their care assessed or mitigated. Peoples care plans needed further information about how to reduce risks in their care.
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.
Staff supported people to take part in activities and pursue their interests, where it was part of their care plan. Staff supported people to access health and social care support and people were supported with their medicines safely.
Right Care:
People received kind and compassionate care. Staff protected and respected people’s privacy and dignity. They understood and responded to their individual needs.
Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. Staff received training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it.
The service had enough appropriately skilled staff to meet people’s needs and keep them safe.
People could communicate with staff and understand information given to them because they had a consistent staff team who understood their individual communication needs.
Right Culture:
Systems to oversee the quality of the service had not always been effective. We identified care records did not always reflect the knowledge staff had of how to support a person.
The service enabled people and those important to them to work with staff to develop the service.
Staff evaluated the quality of support provided to people. Whilst people told us they had opportunities to review their care, records to support this could be more clearly presented.
Staff placed people’s wishes, needs and rights at the heart of everything they did.
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 02 July 2021 and this is their first inspection.
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about the service.
Enforcement
We have identified a breach in how the provider monitors the quality of the service. 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.