Shaftesbury St Giles

St Giles is a supported living complex in a rural setting consisting of 40 bungalows, with a central building housing offices and shared living areas. Livability provides personal care support at St Giles. The service predominantly supports people with a learning disability or autistic people; they are also registered to support people with mental health needs, older people and people with physical and sensory impairments. At the time of our inspection there were 6 people using the service.

Some of the people at St Giles received personal care from other organisations. In this report we only inspected the personal care provided by Livability.

CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided. Not everyone who lived at St Giles received support with their personal care from Livability, for example some people received support with domestic tasks only. This meant we did not look at the support Livability provided for some people.

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 and 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.

Right Support:

Livability provided care at St Giles. Established many years ago, St Giles does fully not reflect the current principles outlined in ‘Right support, right care right culture.’ However, within this setting, Livability provided care which reflected best practice and promoted choice.

A person told us, “I like my house here. I like being independent.”

Staff focused on people’s strengths and promoted what they could do, so people had a fulfilling and meaningful everyday life. A relative told us, “My family member is doing well. They are going out more. Staff definitely know how to support them. The service has done wonders, they are brilliant.”

Staff supported people to have the maximum possible choice, control and independence to be independent and they had control over their own lives. Staff supported people to make decisions following best practice in decision-making.

Staff supported people with their medicines in a way that promoted their independence and achieved the best possible health outcome. Staff supported people to play an active role in maintaining their own health and wellbeing.

Right Care:

People received kind and compassionate care. Staff protected and respected people’s privacy and dignity. They understood and responded to their individual needs.

Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. 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 and safely recruited staff to meet people’s needs.

People could communicate with staff and understand information given to them because staff supported them consistently and understood their individual communication needs.

People received care that supported their needs and aspirations, was focused on their quality of life, and followed best practice. A professional told us, “People thrive with Livability.”

Right Culture:

Staff knew and understood people well and were responsive, supporting their aspirations to live a quality life of their choosing.

Staff placed people’s wishes, needs and rights at the heart of everything they did. People and those important to them were involved in planning their care.

The registered manager and provider evaluated the quality of support provided to people, involving the person, their families and other professionals as appropriate. They developed good relationships with other organisations.

People’s quality of life was enhanced by the service’s culture of improvement 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 10 October 2020 and this is the first inspection. The last rating for the service under the previous provider was good, published on 21 March 2017.

Why we inspected

We undertook this inspection to assess that the service was applying the principles of Right support, right care, right culture.