Feather-Stone Care

Updated 16 September 2020

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by one inspector.

Service and service type

This service provides care and support to people living in five ‘supported living’ settings. People’s care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) does not regulate premises used for supported living; this inspection looked at people’s personal care and support.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. Registered managers and providers have legal responsibilities for how they run the service and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit. This was because it is a small service and we needed to be sure that the provider or registered manager would be in the office to support the inspection, particularly in light of Covid-19.

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.

The provider was not asked to complete a provider information return prior to this inspection. This is information we require providers to send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We took this into account when we inspected the service and made the judgements in this report.

We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with four people who used the service, four people’s relatives and three members of care staff. We also received feedback from a healthcare professional involved with the service and spoke with both registered managers.

Updated 16 September 2020

About the service

Feather-Stone Care is a supported living service, supporting nine people with learning disabilities across five different properties.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

People who used the service told us they felt safe. They told us staff treated them well and they knew who the registered manager was. People’s relatives and partnership agencies told us they were happy with the service and felt that people had made good progress since they had begun using the service.

Safeguarding investigations were completed as required and appropriate action was taken when staff had not met expectations. There were suitable numbers of appropriately recruited staff available to ensure people could complete activities they enjoyed. Risk assessments were in place to support people to receive safe care.

The management team were striving to improve the culture within the service and took an open and transparent approach when incidents occurred. The management team were eager to learn and share good practice and this helped people to make good progress. Systems were in place to audit the care provided and to seek feedback from people involved with the service.

For more information, please read the detailed findings section of this report. If you are reading this as a separate summary, the full report can be found on the Care Quality Commission (CQC) website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection:

The last rating for this service was good (published 11 May 2018).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted in part due to concerns we received about staffing and if people were put at risk because of this. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only. We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.

The overall rating for the service has not changed following this focused inspection and remains Good.

What happens next?

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.