New Forest Homecare Ltd

This service is a domiciliary care agency. New Forest Home Care provides personal care and support to people in their own homes. At the time of our inspection the agency was providing a service for 27 older people with a variety of care needs, including people living with physical frailty or memory loss due to the progression of age.

The service had a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are 'registered persons'. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated regulations about how the service is run.

We received positive feedback from people about the service. All the people who used the service expressed great satisfaction and spoke highly of the care staff.

People felt safe with the service provided by New Forest Home Care. Staff had received training in safeguarding adults and knew how to identify, prevent and report abuse. Improvements had been made to recruitment practices to ensure people were kept safe.

The risks to people were minimized through risk assessments, which provided staff with clear guidelines to follow. There were plans in place for foreseeable emergencies.

People were supported to take their medicines safely from suitably trained staff. Staff contacted healthcare professionals promptly when they had concerns about people's health and wellbeing.

People felt they were treated with kindness and compassion and said their privacy and dignity was respected. Staff had an understanding of the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) and understood that people had the right to make their own choices.

Staff received regular support and one to one sessions or supervision to discuss areas of development. They completed a wide range of training and felt it supported them in their job role. New staff completed an induction before being permitted to work unsupervised. There were sufficient numbers of staff to maintain the schedule of care visits to meet people's needs.

Care plans provided comprehensive information about how people wished to receive care and support. This helped ensure people received personalised care in a way that met their individual needs.

People were supported with their nutritional needs when required. staff were aware of people's likes and dislikes.

People felt listened to and a complaints procedure was in place and people knew how to make a complaint if they needed to.

Staff felt supported by the management and felt they could visit the office and be listened to. Regular audits of the service were carried out to assess and monitor the quality of the service.

The five questions we ask about services and what we found