Archived: 61 Castleton Avenue

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 is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and to pilot a new inspection process being introduced by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) which looks at the overall quality of the service.

This was an announced inspection carried out on 10 and 15 July 2014. We gave the provider 48 hours notice of our inspection. At our last inspection in February 2014 we asked the provider to take action to ensure they considered people’s capacity to consent to their tenancy agreements. At this inspection we found that the provider had made arrangements to ensure that people’s rights were protected and that any decisions were made in their best interests.

The service provides supported living for five people with autistic spectrum disorder, learning disabilities and complex needs. The people who use the service require one to one support from staff due to the assessed risks to themselves and others as a result of behaviours that challenged the service.

People who use the service are tenants of a shared house. They have individual tenancy agreements for their own rooms and shared communal areas. The provider’s website stated that the aims and objectives of the service were to see the world through the eyes of people with autistic spectrum disorder and to use this perspective to enable and support them to function as independently as possible.

There was not a registered manager 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 2008 and associated regulations about how the service is run. The last registered manager left in November 2013, and the next manager left in June 2014 before they were registered. A new manager had started to work for the service and has since registered with CQC.

The provider’s area manager was present for the inspection. They had started to work for the company in May 2014 and had carried out an audit of all records and procedures at the service. We saw the development plan that resulted from the audit for improvements in record keeping, audits and communications with people who used the service, their relatives and staff.

Relatives of people who used the service told us that people felt safe, and staff supported them to keep safe in their home and out in the community. Staff supported people to be as independent as they wanted to be and encouraged them to follow their own individual activities and interests. Staff helped make sure people were safe in the community by looking at the risks they may face and taking steps to reduce those risks.

There were enough qualified and skilled staff at the service. Staff had access to the information, support and training they needed to do their jobs well. During our inspection we saw that staff were caring and attentive to people and had a good understanding of individual needs.

Care records we saw contained information about the healthcare and support people needed and we saw people had access to healthcare professionals when they needed them.

There were effective systems in place to monitor the care and welfare of people and improve the quality of the service provided. The provider used information about quality of the service and incidents to draw up and follow a development plan for improvements to the service.