Willoughby House

Updated 2 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

Willoughby House is a ‘care home’. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing and/or personal care as a single package under one contractual agreement dependent on their registration with us. Willoughby House is a care home without nursing care. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

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 not a registered manager in post. However, a manager had been appointment and had submitted their application to the CQC.

Notice of inspection

The inspection was unannounced. Inspection activity began on 8 January 2024 when we visited the service. We spoke with relatives and professionals and reviewed documents submitted for review. The inspection ended on 19 January 2024.

What we did before the inspection

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 sought feedback from professionals who work with the service and Healthwatch England. Healthwatch is an independent consumer champion that gathers and represents the views of the public about health and social care services in England. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We are improving how we hear people's experience and views on services, when people have limited verbal communication. We have trained some CQC team members to use a symbol-based communication tool. We checked this was a suitable communication method, and people were happy to use it with us. We did this by reading their care and communication plans and speaking to staff and the person themselves. In this report, we used this communication tool with 1 person to tell us their experience of the care.

We also used a combination of speaking with people and observing their responses, gestures and body language. We communicated in this way with a further 4 people. We spoke with 3 people's relatives and 4 professionals who work with the service. We spoke with 5 members of staff including the manager and care staff.

We reviewed care records for 4 people including medicines records. We looked at recruitment records for 2 staff and a variety of quality assurance records such as audits as well as reviewing policies and procedures.

Updated 2 February 2024

About the service

Willoughby House is a residential care home providing personal care and accommodation to up to 8 people. The service provides support to autistic people and people with a learning disability. At the time of our inspection there were 6 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 assessment 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 take part in activities and pursue their interests in their local area with people who had shared interests.

Staff focused on people’s strengths and promoted what they could do, so people had a fulfilling and meaningful everyday life.

People had a choice about their living environment and were able to personalise their rooms.

Staff supported people with their medicines in a way that promoted their independence and achieved the best possible health outcome.

Staff enabled people to access specialist health and social care support in the community and to play an active role in maintaining their own health and wellbeing.

Right Care

People received kind and compassionate care. Staff protected and respected people’s privacy and dignity. They understood and responded to their individual needs.

Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. The service worked well with other agencies to do so. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it.

The service had enough appropriately skilled staff to meet people’s needs and keep them safe.

People who had individual ways of communicating, using body language, sounds, Makaton (a form of sign language), pictures and symbols could interact comfortably with staff and others involved in their treatment/care and support because staff had the necessary skills to understand them.

People’s care, treatment and support plans reflected their range of needs and this promoted their wellbeing and enjoyment of life.

Staff and people worked together to assess risks people might face. Where appropriate, staff encouraged and enabled people to take positive risks.

Right Culture

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

People were supported by staff who understood best practice in relation to the wide range of strengths, impairments or sensitivities people with a learning disability and/or autistic people may have. This meant people received compassionate and empowering care that was tailored to their needs.

Staff turnover was very low, which supported people to receive consistent care from staff who knew them well. Staff placed people’s wishes, needs and rights at the heart of everything they did. People and those important to them, including advocates, were involved in planning their care.

Systems to guide staff and record care and treatment needed reviewing and was being updated by the manager. They worked well with external professionals to meet people’s needs which ensured risks of a closed culture were minimised so that people received support based on transparency, respect and inclusivity.

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 (Published 28 June 2019).

Why we inspected

The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about how people were treated. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks. During this inspection we found no evidence to support the risks identified.

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 inspection reports and timeline’ link for Willoughby House 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.