St Edmunds Court

At the time of the inspection, the location only provided support with personal care for one person with a learning disability. However, we assessed the care provision under Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture, as it is registered as a specialist service for this population group.

About the service

St Edmunds Court is a domiciliary care service and extra care scheme registered to provide personal care to people living in their own homes. The service is registered to support people some of whom may have dementia, mental health needs, people who misuse drugs and alcohol, had a physical disability, or were sensory impaired. The care agency can also support people with a learning disability and autism. At the time of the inspection 34 people were using the domiciliary care agency at the extra care housing scheme. The extra care housing scheme building had 51 rented flats with shared rooms, a restaurant and a shared garden.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

Right Support:

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the systems in the service supported this practice. Staff encouraged people to be as independent as possible and to remain in their own homes. This enabled people to have as much control over their own lives as practicable. Staff supported people who required assistance with their medicines to promote the best possible health outcomes. Where needed staff supported people with links with the local community.

We have made a recommendation about improving the level of detail within people’s care records and risk assessments to guide staff on people’s health conditions and known risks.

Right Care:

Staff cared for people kindly. They protected and respected people's privacy and dignity. Staff understood and responded to people's individual needs and wishes. Staff knew how to protect people from poor care and harm. The management team and staff worked with other health and social care professionals to maintain people’s well-being wherever possible. Staff were trained to recognise, and report poor care or harm and they knew how to apply it. People told us they could communicate with most staff and understood information given to them because most staff were aware of people's individual communication needs. However, some people told us some agency staffs language skills could be improved.

The service had enough staff to cover people’s care call visits, however this was due to the use of agency staff. Some people and their relatives had mixed opinions on the skills and knowledge of some agency staff used.

We have made a recommendation for the provider to consider a formal induction and training competency spot checks for agency staff working at the service to ensure they had the right skills and knowledge to support people.

Right Culture:

People and those important to them, were involved in planning their and their family members care decisions. People and relatives had mixed opinions about how complaints or concerns were dealt with. Incidents and accidents were reviewed to look for patterns and trends. Action was taken when needed, this included retraining staff on safe medicines administration to try to reduce the risk of recurrence. Audits were undertaken to monitor the service and a survey in 2021 was sent to people to ask for feedback on the service provided. Staff had chosen not to complete the 2021 staff survey, but another survey was about to be sent out to engage staff and ask for their views.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection and update

This service was registered with us on 6 May 2021 and this is the first inspection. The last rating for the service under the previous provider was good, published on 9 October 2019.

Why we inspected

This inspection was based on the service being unrated since the new provider reregistered with the CQC.

Recommendations

We have made some provider recommendations for them to consider.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.