A NORTHWICH-based service which provides personal care to people living in their own homes has been ruled as requiring improvement by Government inspectors.

Your Life Your Way operates from Denton House, Denton Drive, and provides services on behalf of local authorities and clinical commissioning groups across towns and cities across the north west.

It has been given the assessment following a five-day inspection in October by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The service employs up to 400 staff.

When measuring the five key indicators, the inspection ruled that while the service was good when it came to effectiveness and caring, it was requiring improvement in three key areas of safety, responsiveness and being well led.

The service is provided to older adults, younger disabled adults, people living with a learning disability and children.

The CQC was only tasked with inspecting the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’, help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating, but took account of any wider social care provided to these individuals.

During the inspection the CQC identified breaches of Regulations 9, 12 and 17 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

The CQC said: “Not all people we spoke with were confident that either they or their relatives were adequately protected from harm.

“At the time of the inspection there were safeguarding investigations under way in relation to poor care planning and risk assessing for people with complex physical and behavioural needs.

“In one example, a person was placed at risk because their care record did not contain adequate information about monitoring their continence needs, whilst another person’s care record did not contain the correct information about the setting their ventilator needed to be on to aid with their breathing.”

The report said staff were not always clear about who their line manager was and this together with other problems in providing smooth transitions had resulted in low staff morale amongst those supporting newer packages of care, and lower satisfaction among people and their relatives who had more recently started being supported by Your Life Your Way.

The report said that the firm’s audit systems had not been robust enough to address problems identified by the local authority safeguarding team.

A statement issued by the Your Life Your Way directors said: “We are all disappointed that the rating from our recent CQC inspection is not what we have worked towards or had hoped for.

“The company has experienced huge demand for homecare across all areas and now employs 400 carers across the north west.

“We always strive to deliver the highest quality care in the industry, unfortunately in some instances the processes we have in place have not been followed and this has resulted in us falling short of the highest standards we set all employees.

“Since the inspection we have already implemented a detailed improvement plan to address the areas that require our attention and we are confident that when the CQC re- inspect us, which will happen within the next twelve months, that the rating will significantly improve.”