Archived: Belfry Gardens

Updated 7 August 2015

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This inspection was to check that improvements had been made to meet legal requirements planned by the provider after our comprehensive inspection on 4 November 2014. We inspected this service against one of the five questions we ask about services: is the service well led. This is because the service was not meeting some legal requirements.

Before our inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service, this included the provider’s action plan, which set out the action they would take to meet legal requirements.

This focused inspection took place on 8 May 2015. The inspection team consisted of an adult social care inspector.

At the time of our inspection the service was only supporting a small number of people. We did not speak to people who used the service as the shortfalls we were checking were regarding records. We looked at records pertaining to care, risk assessment, staff training, auditing and medication.

Updated 7 August 2015

We carried out an unannounced comprehensive inspection of this service on 4 November 2014 in which a breach of the legal requirements was found in relation to governance. This report relates to that breach. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for ‘Belfry Gardens’ on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

We carried out this focused inspection on 8 May 2015 to ensure improvements planned by the provider had been implemented to address this breach of Regulation. We found that action had been taken to improve the governance of service provision.

Belfry Gardens is registered to provide personal care to people in supported living. The service aims to provide care and support to people with learning disabilities and autistic spectrum disorders. Care and support was co-ordinated from the service’s office which is based at the same address.

The service had a registered manager in post at the time of our inspection. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons.’ Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

At this focused inspection we found governance and audits had been improved. We saw a structured audit process was in place to help make sure staff and people who used the service were safe and the quality of all aspects of the service were regularly reviewed.

A staff training plan had been updated and a programme of mandatory training arranged. The provider had made these arrangements in consultation with the local authority.

We also saw improvements had been made with regards to recording the assessment of identified risks. Information about risks associated with people’s care now provided clearer guidance to staff about their role in supporting people’s safely.

At our last inspection we found where people needed assistance taking their medicines, records lacked specific information about the medicines administered by staff. At this visit we saw new medication administration forms had been introduced which recorded all the information required.