About the service: The Wilf Ward Family Trust – Supported Living (Outer York & Leeds) provides care and support to people living in nine ‘supported living’ settings, so that they can live in their own homes as independently as possible. At the time of our inspection the service was supporting 23 people with a learning disability, physical disability, sensory impairment and/or dementia.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found:
We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports the Care Quality Commission to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people.
This service was able to demonstrate how they were meeting the underpinning principles of Right support, right care, right culture. There was a strong focus on promoting people’s choice, control and independence. Positive risk taking was encouraged to ensure people lead full lives. Relatives and professionals described the service as person-centred and staff promoted people’s dignity, privacy and human rights. There was a positive, open and inclusive culture.
People received a very responsive and effective service from staff who were well trained, very caring and attentive. There were enough staff to meet people’s needs and people received their medicines as prescribed. Staff assessed and mitigated risks to people’s safety and wellbeing.
Staff received a comprehensive induction, on-going training, supervision and appraisal to continually develop their skills. People were supported to maintain a healthy balanced diet. Staff were proactive and worked very well with healthcare professionals to ensure people’s holistic needs were met. This had resulted in particularly positive outcomes for some people.
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. Staff sought people’s consent and were skilled at understanding and respecting people’s choices. This included using a range of communication aids to enable people to express themselves.
Support plans contained good information about people’s needs, preferences and goals. People were supported to participate in a range of leisure, education and employment activities. There was a system to ensure any complaints people raised were investigated and responded to.
There was a robust quality assurance system in place, with a very clear emphasis on continual improvement and delivering a high-quality service. People were involved in the provider’s quality assurance process and their feedback was used to develop the service.
The service benefitted from a strong, visible management team. Staff felt very supported and enjoyed their work. Relatives and visiting professionals were unanimous in their praise of the service.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection:
This service was registered with us on 20 November 2019 and this is the first inspection.
The supported living settings were previously registered under one of the provider’s other registered locations ‘The Wilf Ward Family Trust Domiciliary Care York’.
Why we inspected:
This was a planned inspection based on the date of the provider’s registration.
Follow up:
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.