St Anthony of Padua Care Services

Updated 23 December 2023

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection team consisted of 1 inspector and 2 Experts by Experience. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

Service and service type

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats and specialist housing.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post.

Notice of inspection

The inspection was announced. We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because we needed to be sure the provider or registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection. We also needed to arrange to visit people in their homes and seek consent for this to occur.

Inspection activity started on 14 November and ended on 22 November. We visited the location offices on 14 and 22 November 2023.

What we did before the inspection

We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make.

We contacted the local authority commissioning and safeguarding teams and Healthwatch. Healthwatch is an independent consumer champion that gathers and represents the views of the public about health and social care services in England. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We visited 7 people in their homes and spoke with a further 15 by telephone. We spoke with 14 relatives about their experience of the care provided.

We observed staff interacting with people. We spoke with the registered manager, the chair of trustees, the chief executive officer (who is also the nominated individual), managers of the two supported houses, the housing support manager, care coordinators, HR staff, day centre staff, and 8 care staff. The nominated individual is responsible for supervising the management of the service on behalf of the provider. We also received emailed feedback from 16 care and support staff.

We asked for feedback via email from 20 health and social care professionals and received 15 responses.

We reviewed a range of records. This included people’s care and support records and medication records. A variety of records relating to the management of the service, including auditing, training data, action plans, analysis, policies, and procedures were reviewed.

Updated 23 December 2023

About the service

St Anthony of Padua Care Services is a domiciliary care service providing care to approximately 180 people in their own homes. Services were provided to adults with a wide range of health and social care needs including physical disabilities, sensory impairments, learning disabilities, mental health needs and dementia.

Not everyone who used the service received personal care. The Care Quality Commission 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.

People’s experience of the service and what we found

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. We considered this guidance as there were people using the service who have a learning disability and or who are autistic.

Right Support

People were supported by extremelly warm, compassionate, and dedicated staff. Staff encouraged people to be fully involved with the local community wherever possible. The provider ensured any risks to people’s safety and welfare were assessed and mitigated effectively. Medicines were well managed. We did make some suggestions to enhance processes which were acted on immediately.

The provider collaborated extremely well with external agencies, health and social work professionals, relatives, and people to ensure people’s needs were met. People experienced excellent outcomes because of this. 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 policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

Right Care

People received a very high quality of care from a dedicated and forward thinking, well-trained staff and management team. People felt safe and protected from abuse. Staff understood how to encourage and promote independence. The provider had several schemes in place to support this, including a movement/dance project in people’s homes.

Right culture

The ethos and culture of the service focussed on people being firmly placed at the heart of the service. People, their relatives, and staff were extremely complimentary about the service and the management team. The management team were extremely forward thinking and truly embedded a holistic and community-based approach to providing care to people.

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

Rating at last inspection was Outstanding (published 23 March 2018).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

We undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well led only. For those key question not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for St Anthony of Padua Care Services on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow Up

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