Westwood Homecare (NorthWest) Limited Stockport

Staff received a programme of induction, training and supervision. People were supported to access a wide range of health care professionals to ensure they received appropriate and timely support. People were mostly supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff mostly supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. However, we have made a recommendation about capacity assessments and staff training.

People and their loved ones told us staff were caring and kind and mostly treated them with respect. Staff had a good understanding of how to support people in a way that promoted their independence and respected their privacy and dignity. We have made 1 recommendation about staff language barriers and a 1 recommendation about people's gender preferences.

Care plans were person-centred and written with involvement of people and their loved ones. However, the service had suffered a complete failure of the electronic care system for several weeks and staff only had access to people's paper care plans in their homes.

Systems and processes to ensure oversight of the safety and quality of the service were not always effective. Audits completed had not always identified the concerns we found on inspection. We identified 2 continued breaches of regulations. The management team acknowledged our concerns and were quick to take action and provide assurances when we fed back our findings during and after the inspection.