Home First Communities

Date of Assessment: 4 February to 14 February 2025. Home Support Service, known as Short Term Intervention Team (STIT), is a domiciliary care agency registered to provide personal care to people in their own homes. Home Support Service primarily provide a reablement service. The reablement service provides people with support for up to six weeks to help them live independently following discharge from hospital. In some instances, people receive 'extended reablement' longer than six weeks until a permanent care provider can be found. There were systems in place to reduce the risk of abuse and to assess and monitor potential risks to individual people. Concerns, complaints, incidents and accidents were being effectively monitored and analysed to reduce risks to people. Recruitment processes helped the employer make safer recruitment decisions when employing staff. Care workers had undertaken a structured induction and ongoing training and support; to help develop their knowledge and skills so they could effectively meet people's needs. Medications were administered or prompted by staff who had been trained to carry out this role and whose competency was periodically checked. Staff understood the importance of gaining people's consent and acting in their best interest. People had been involved in care assessments and developing their support plans. Plans provided clear guidance to staff and carers, which assisted them to support people in the way they preferred. People were enabled to raise complaints and concerns. The people we spoke with told us they would feel comfortable raising concerns, if they had any. When concerns had been raised the correct procedure had been used to record, investigate and resolve issues. There were systems in place to continuously assess and monitor the quality of the service. This included obtaining people's views and checking staff were following the correct procedures.