Archived: Laurel House

Laurel House is a supported living service providing personal care and support to nine younger adults at the time of the inspection at two houses. The houses have a shared lounge area, dining room, bathroom and toilet facilities and a shared garden. One of the houses has the services office from which the regulated activity of personal care is carried out from. The office will be moving outside of this supported living address.

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

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence. We also expect good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

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 empowered people to be as independent as possible. People were encouraged to have as much control over their own lives as practicable. Staff focused on people’s strengths and promoted what they could do, so people had a fulfilling and meaningful everyday life. Staff supported people to pursue their hobbies and leisure pursuits and to achieve their aspirations and goals. This included living as independent a life as possible.

Staff worked with people to plan for when they experienced periods of anxiety. This was so people’s freedoms were restricted only if there was no alternative. Staff learned from those incidents and how they might be avoided or reduced. People had a choice about their living environment and were able to personalise their rooms. Staff enabled people to access specialist health and social care support in the community. Staff supported people with their medicines in a way that achieved the best possible health outcome.

Right Care:

People received kind and compassionate care. Staff protected and respected people’s privacy and dignity. Staff understood and responded to people’s individual needs. Staff knew how to protect people from poor care and harm. The service worked well with other agencies to do so. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it. The service had enough appropriately skilled staff to meet people’s needs and keep them safe. People could communicate with staff and understand information given to them because staff supported them consistently. Staff understood people’s individual communication needs. People’s care, treatment and support plans reflected their range of needs and this promoted their wellbeing and enjoyment of life. Where appropriate, staff encouraged and enabled people to take positive risks.

Right Culture:

People led inclusive and empowered lives because of the ethos, values, attitudes and behaviours of the management and staff. People received good quality care, support and treatment because trained staff could meet their needs and wishes. Staff placed people’s wishes, needs and rights at the heart of everything they did. People and those important to them, including advocates, were involved in planning their care. Staff enabled people and those important to them worked with staff to develop the service. Staff valued and acted upon people’s views. Staff ensured risks of a closed culture were minimised so that people received support based on transparency, respect and inclusivity.

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

Rating at last inspection

This service was registered with us on 18 June 2021 and this is the first inspection. The last rating for the service under the previous provider was Good, published on 15 March 2019.

Why we inspected

This is the first rating of this service under the new provider. This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

Follow up

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