A DISABILITY charity providing home care in Bradford has improved in recent months but more work still needs to be done, according to the latest findings of the industry watchdog.

In December, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found care provider Bradnet to be inadequate and said it was failing several key areas.

The service had been inspected in November and the watchdog's report, published the following month, said the most people, or their relatives, had raised concerns about the quality of care when contacted by the CQC.

The organisation, which provides personal care services to people with learning and physical disabilities, the elderly and children, was warned it had to make significant improvements within six months or it could face further action.

"A significant portion of people who used the service lived with relatives. Relatives told us that care staff often arrived late or sometimes not at all, which meant they often had to step in to provide the required care," it said.

Now, results of a new inspection have now rated its services as "requires improvement" - a step up from the "inadequate" rating of December.

An action plan was drawn up in the light of the initial CQC inspection.

Inspectors found during the most recent visit, in May, that "a number of improvements had been made to the service, although some risks still remained which needed to be promptly addressed".

Examples of areas where improvements have been made were listed as: staff attitude and the reliability of the service; the way complaints are managed; staff training and assessments; the introduction of a staff uniform; and the way care records were kept.

But there will still instances within these areas of improvements that required attention and consistency still needed to be improved, the report said.

Inspectors identified instances were some staff were not always thorough with washing and personal care tasks, and some occasions where the call time had been reduced either because staff had arrived late or left early.

In addition they highlighted that some medication records were not always accurately completed.

The report said of the way forward: "The service was in the process of implementing the third phase of their service improvement plan which aimed to further improve a number of areas, including the quality and consistency of care staff, medicine management and the way that care runs were organised.

"This plan would be crucial to ensure that the remaining risks were effectively addressed."

Asif Hussain, the chief executive of Bradnet, said in a statement to the Telegraph & Argus: "[The] CQC has recognised that significant improvements have been made across all areas.

"It is evident that we still have work to do to improve some aspects mentioned by the CQC and we will continue to take positive and earnest steps to ensure improvements are ongoing and sustained."

Prior to the CQC inspection last year, Bradnet voluntarily took steps to give back contracts which were straying into specialist nursing care, rather than personal care only, and also stopped taking new referrals from Bradford Council.

The local authority confirmed at the time that it had stopped recommending Bradnet's services to people and would only do so in the future when the CQC had confirmed an acceptable improvement in the quality of those services.