Sunshine Care Agency

Sunshine Care Agency is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes.

At the time of the inspection the provider was supporting two people with personal care.

Both people’s care was funded through a local authority direct payment agreement. A direct payment is the amount of money that the local authority has to pay to meet the needs of people and is given to them to have control and choice over who they choose to provide their care.

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

Whilst risks to people's safety were assessed, control measures and clear guidance for staff to follow to manage these risks were not clearly recorded to highlight how people could be supported safely.

Although the issues we found did not directly impact the level of care and support people received, improvements were needed in the level of detail within people’s care plans and risk assessments. This included areas such as diabetes management, communication and decision making.

There were monitoring and auditing systems in place to identify any issues with the quality of the service. Due to the size of the service, formal records were not always kept. However, people, their relatives and staff confirmed there were regular checks across the service.

People and their relatives were happy with how their care and support was being delivered and felt staff had a good understanding of their needs to help keep them safe. One person said, “This support makes a big difference to me, it is very person centred and makes me feel like an individual.”

People and their family members benefitted from having regular staff who spoke their first language to help communication and to understand their cultural needs.

Staff had been introduced to people and completed observations to help them understand how people liked to be cared for and to make them feel comfortable before starting care.

People were supported by staff who told us they enjoyed working for the organisation, felt valued and spoke positively about the supportive working environment.

People and their relatives were positive about the management of the organisation and told us the management team were approachable, flexible and went above and beyond in the support they provided.

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.

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

Rating at last inspection

The service was registered with us on 29 October 2020 and this is the first inspection.

Why we inspected

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

Enforcement and recommendations

We have identified a breach in relation to safe care and treatment.

We have made two recommendations about how people’s communication needs are recorded and ensuring capacity assessments are completed in line with best practice.

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.