A HELENSBURGH-based care at home agency has cause for celebration after it was praised by inspectors.

Joan’s Carers, which has an office in West King Street, received unannounced visits by the Care Inspectorate over four dates in August.

The facility received a glowing report, with the organisation graded ‘very good’ in two evaluation points and 'good' in the other two categories.

The care watchdog found that people and families highly appreciated the service that staff provided to them and their loved ones.

The report stated: "They spoke very highly of staff both in terms of the support they offered but also in relation to their kindness and friendliness.

"Staff were respectful of delivering a service in someone's home. This helped provide assurance that people were treated with compassion and in a person-centred manner.

"Contact with staff was very important to people; they valued the opportunity to chat and have company.

"For many, this was their main connection with other people and they looked forward to someone coming in."

Inspectors were also left impressed with the thought-process behind the rotas to ensure that people using the service were consistently supported.

They added: "Organising rotas in care at home services is a vastly underrated role. It requires a lot of juggling to ensure the right staff are in the right place at the right time.

"Services are often organising a lot of runs which are generally tied to a geographic area.

"Over several months, the leaders had worked hard to make the runs work better for the people supported but also for staff.

"The new rotas were made up with three weeks' notice which was supportive of staff wellbeing.

"Importantly, staff could also choose a level of flexibility in their work pattern (within reason) which meant a lot of extra work for rota planning but meant staff felt valued."

However, an area of improvement was made to monitor the timings of visits after one run left people feeling that their care was rushed due to travel issues.

But despite this, it was highlighted by the inspectors that staff and management always had the care of people as their core focus which was demonstrated in personal plans.

They said: "The plans also contained a strong sense of who the person was which helped staff understand the richness of people's lives.

"This went a long way to understand what was important to people, the things that really matter, things that make them feel happy, content and fulfilled, and things that they look forward to.

"This reassured us that leaders were keeping people at the centre of their care and support."

The watchdog also praised improvements made at the facility following a previous inspection in November last year and March this year.

The report asked for the systems in place to get medication to be safe and ensure risk assessment documentation was available for staff to have access to.

The agency had also met the three areas of improvement set by the care watchdog following a complaint made earlier this year.