United Response-North Tyneside DCA

United Response-North Tyneside DCA is registered both as a domiciliary care agency and a supported living service. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes, and care and support to people with a learning disability or who are autistic, living in a 'supported living' setting, so they can live as independently as possible.

People's care and housing are provided under separate contractual arrangements. The CQC does not regulate premises used for supported living; this inspection looked at people's care and support.

Not everyone using the service received a regulated activity. CQC only inspects the service being received by people who are provided with the regulated activity of 'personal care', for example which includes help with tasks such as personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also take into account any wider social care provided. There were 32 people using the service for personal care and they lived in 12 supported living settings.

People’s experience of using this 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 assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

The service was able to demonstrate how they were meeting underpinning principles of “Right support, right care, right culture".

Right support:

The model of care and settings maximised people's choice, control and independence 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.

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

People were supported by staff to pursue their interests.

Staff enabled people to access specialist health and social care support in the community.

Cleaning and infection control procedures were in line with COVID-19 guidance, to help protect people, visitors and staff from the risk of infection. Government guidance about COVID-19 testing staff was enhanced during the inspection.

Right care:

People received good quality person-centred care that promoted their dignity, privacy and human rights.

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 safely recruited and appropriately skilled staff to meet people’s needs and keep them safe. Staff were well supported.

Right culture:

The ethos, values, and attitudes of management and care staff ensured people led confident, inclusive and empowered lives. People and those important to them, including advocates, were involved in planning their care.

Staff 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

This service was registered with us on 19 November 2020 and this is the first inspection.

Why we inspected

We undertook this inspection to assess that the service is applying the principles of Right support, right care, right culture and because the service had not been previously inspected since registering with the CQC.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.