Friendly Support Services Limited

We carried out this assessment due to an aged rating. The provider runs a homecare service, supporting people with personal care in their own homes.

The provider worked well with external organisations, such as Speech and Language Therapists, but an area for improvement was identified to ensure that they were prepared for emergency situations so transition between services for people would be smooth and cause minimal disruption for people.

The provider assessed people’s needs, assessed and managed risk and provided person centred care to people using the service. They included people, relatives and relevant professionals in decisions about people’s care and worked closely with people and relatives to fine tune people’s experiences.

The provider held a long-standing staff team, with some staff having worked there for over 10 years. Staff had good knowledge of the people they were supporting and their roles. The provider ensured there was detailed and thorough information available to staff should they need to refer to it for guidance. This in turn ensured consistency for people using the service.

Leaders at the service maintained good oversight and were regularly involved with people’s care. There was not as much provider oversight, however, when asked about this, providers maintained that they were extremely confident in the managers ability to run the service effectively.

During [LT1]our assessment, we found some low risk, low impact concerns. When these were highlighted to leaders, they took prompt and effective action to rectify these concerns. These concerns were in relation to medication storage conditions, and we found some staff were not clear on their role in safeguarding processes. However, we found no evidence of people being harmed or put at risk of harm.

We found that there was a strong learning culture within the provider and they were receptive to feedback, ensuring new processes were embedded into the service in a timely manner.

We found there was a lack of knowledge around the Mental Capacity Act, Deprivations of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) and safeguarding amongst leaders and staff. This had not had an impact on people at the time of our assessment. The provider took this finding seriously and began work to improve this immediately.

Staff fed back that they were happy in their jobs and felt the service had improved significantly since the new management team were in place, which happened in June 2025. One staff member told us that the managers were implementing and introducing things that should have been there all along, another told us, they really do their best for the service, and they could see the positive impact this was having.