Accept Care Limited

Updated 10 February 2024

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 1 Expert 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

Accept Care is a Supported Living service. Staff provide on-site support at three sites in County Durham where people live in their own flats. At the time of our inspection there were 56 people using the service.

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 24 hours’ notice of the inspection. This was because we needed to be sure that the provider or registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. We sought feedback from the local authority and a range of professionals who work with the service. 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 used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with 6 people who used the service and 8 relatives. We spoke with the registered manager, the head of operations, and 9 support workers.

We looked at a variety of records. These included people’s care and medicine records, monitoring documentation, staff files, engagement work, training records, newsletters and audits used to monitor the service.

Updated 10 February 2024

About the service

Accept Care provides personal care on a supported living basis to people living in their own houses and flats in the community on three sites in County Durham. It provides a service to adults with learning disabilities and mental health issues. At the time of our inspection there were 56 people using the service.

People’s experience of the 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

Staff supported people to have the maximum possible choice, control and independence and they supported people to make decisions following best practice in decision-making. Staff communicated well with people and ensured others were supported to do so through good information sharing. People were enabled to make a range of choices and to pursue a range of new activities and experiences, where they wanted.

Right Care

Staff protected people from poor care and abuse. Staff had a range of training to equip them to support people and regularly had access to additional training. Staff were deployed to keep people safe and enable them to fulfil their goals. Risks to people were assessed and people were enabled people to take positive risks in order to fulfil their goals. Leaders worked well with a range of agencies to ensure risk management plans were not overly restrictive.

Right Culture

The culture was geared towards supporting and empowering each person who used the service in a way that worked for them. People were supported to explore the things that mattered to them and to live the lives they wanted. Staff supported this and this inclusive ethos of the service was evident throughout. Leaders were passionate about advocating for people’s rights and celebrating their achievements. Staff worked together to ensure people enjoyed improved quality of life outcomes. The culture was open and positive. Leaders had made a range of local and wider links that helped continually improve the service, sharing best practice. They had a positive impact on the broader landscape of social care and were a source of information and advice for others in the sector.

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

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was Good (report published 4 April 2018).

Why we inspected

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

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 Accept Care 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.