First Choice Home Care

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

Caring- this means we looked for evidence that the provider involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

At our last assessment we rated this key question good. At this assessment the rating has remained good. This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care. People told us they felt their needs were being met.

This service scored 70 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

All the people we spoke with told us they felt their needs were met and staff were kind and caring. One person told us “I trust them all” and another person told us “Yes, [staff] are really lovely, I get a lot of help from them”. Through our discussions with staff members, we found there was a shared ethos of kindness and compassion amongst the care team. Staff members were supportive of each other and told us how they wanted the best outcomes for people they supported.

The service treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They took account of people’s strengths, abilities and unique backgrounds. This included respecting people’s preferences for staff to support them and recording this information in care plans. Care plans were person centred and gave a good sense of who that person is.

People we spoke with felt they were given choices and were in full control of their care. All people we spoke with told us that the service promoted their independence. The service documented in their care plans the individual’s independence, what support they required and choices they could make. One person told us “[Staff] give me the confidence and I am a very independent person”.

People we spoke with told us that if appropriate the service responded to any immediate needs. One person’s relative told us “[Relative] did have a pressure sore, and [staff] noticed it straight away. This happened twice and both times it was picked up by the carer”. This was also reflected in staff feedback to us. Staff were aware of their responsibilities and understood the importance of responding to people’s needs. Staff provided examples of how they had previously escalated concerns and the positive outcomes as a result of this. Care plans were clear if a person had a ReSPECT form in place and where this was located. Care plans also made reference to if a person had any informal carers, such as friends or family who support, and if and how the service can support them.

Another person’s relative told us, “[Person] went to the hospital eye clinic, and we were running late as we needed hospital transport, this was delayed, and the [staff] waited for us and came over as soon as we got home. This was great!”.

The service told us about their process of dealing with staff sickness which had been a challenge in recent months. The service manager told us that all office and senior staff are trained in care and are able to be back up cover if the care team could not cover all visits required. On our assessment we saw evidence of senior staff attending care calls that required cover. The service has had high sickness levels, and the service have worked hard on implementing a plan to ensure continuity of the service. This included a priority rating system of all people who use the service. A new electronic monitoring system has been introduced which the service manager acknowledged had caused some challenges for the service as a whole and staff. The service manager told us that this was now improving and during our inspection, we could see how this new system was starting to become more embedded. Staff told us that they enjoyed supporting people in the community. Staff shared with us that since the current service manager has taken post, key areas within the service had started to improve, although staff reported communication was still the biggest barrier. The service has an on-call system that was shared between the manager, deputy manager, care coordinator and quality assurance staff. Staff told us of concerns around the on-call system being hard to reach. The service showed us that they have a carer of the month and often share positive feedback with staff. The service manager told us that they have a wellbeing day once a week where the office is open for the carers to come in and have a chat about anything they chose. Staff who attended these sessions were encouraged to take an item from a well-being hamper. The service also made ‘tokens of appreciation’ for staff that contained a poem and other items. The service had a lone working policy for the staff to follow.