Archived: Linwood Park

Updated 28 July 2016

Linwood Park was registered for providing residential alcohol and drug detoxification and residential rehabilitation to adults over 18. The service was provided in a large house over two floors, the detoxification unit on the first floor had 20 bedrooms. The rehabilitation unit on the ground floor had 14 bedrooms. At the time of the inspection there were eight clients on the rehabilitation unit and seven on the detoxification unit. Over the period of the inspection four people were admitted to the detoxification unit.

Clients were able choose whether to have a detoxification only or have rehabilitation as well as a detoxification.

The service was registered to provide the following regulated activities:

• The accommodation for persons who require treatment for substance misuse.

• Diagnostic and screening procedures.

• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

At the time of the inspection the service received referrals through several referral agencies or directly from people funding their own treatment.

This was the first CQC inspection at this location

Updated 28 July 2016

We do not currently rate independent standalone substance misuse services.

We found the following issues that need to improve:

• The service did not have any lone working protocols in place to ensure the safety of staff when they were lone working on the rehabilitation unit.

• Staff practice in the administration of clients own medication and ‘as and when required’ medication were not safe.

• Staff were not fully aware of how the Mental Capacity Act related to their role and had not identified when an application for a deprivation of liberty safeguard may have been required.

• The principles of equality and diversity were not fully embedded in the systems and processes within the service.

• The provider had not implemented any key performance indicators to monitor the quality of the service.

However, we also found the following areas of good practice:

• Staffing levels in the service would be increased based on the level of occupancy and the needs of the clients.

• We observed genuine, caring interactions between staff and clients.

• The staff we spoke to demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the clients and their individual recovery plans.

• The service was able to respond promptly to requests for detoxification or rehabilitation, offering clients an admission date and time to suit their needs.