- Homecare service
Simply The Best Care Ltd
Report from 29 May 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Simply The Best Care Ltd is a domiciliary care service providing personal care to people living in the community. The service is registered to provide support to older people, younger people, people with dementia and people with a physical disability. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided.
We assessed Simply The Best Care Ltd after receiving information of concern. The concerns were around safeguarding such as allegations of staff living with vulnerable people using the service, and concerns about managers employing overseas staff without completing the relevant checks. During our assessment, we did not find any evidence that either of these concerns were happening at that time.
The assessment team consisted of 2 inspectors and 2 experts by experience. Experts by experience are people with lived experience, or have close family or friends who use these services. During the assessment, we spoke with people using the service, and their family and friends to understand how the service is run. We visited the main office for the service on 26 September 2024. We spoke to 9 people using the service, 6 family members and 6 care staff. We spoke to 6 staff members, including the registered manager . We reviewed recruitment records, care records and policies and procedures.
People's experience of this service
During this assessment we spoke with 6 people using the service and 9 family members of people using the service. People gave mostly positive feedback about the service. They told us the staff treat them kindly and with dignity. People using the service told us they felt the management listened if they wanted to comment or raise any problems. For example, when people or their family raised concerns about provider timekeeping, managers acted on this. However, people and their relatives told us staff or managers did not proactively ask them for regular feedback on the service. Not all people felt that their choices were respected for example with regards to the gender of their care staff, particularly where personal care was delivered. There was mixed feedback about how involved people and their loved ones were with planning care. Some people told us they were fully involved; others did not feel they were as involved in assessments and care plans. There was mixed feedback with how well people thought the staff knew them. Some people had been supported by the same staff for a long and therefore experienced consistency with care. Other people noticed a high turnover of staff which meant staff did not always know them for long. Two people told us they would not recommend the service, however all other people spoke with gave positive feedback indicating they were happy with the service overall.