• Care Home
  • Care home

Suffolk House

Overall: Requires improvement read more about inspection ratings

9 Suffolk Close, London Colney, St. Albans, AL2 1DZ 07988 810861

Provided and run by:
London Paramount Care Ltd

All Inspections

19 April 2022

During a routine inspection

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.

About the service

Suffolk is a residential care home providing personal care to two people at the time of the inspection. The service can support up to two people.

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

Right Support

The provider did not always ensure the service was safe and well-maintained.

Staff did not always support people to reduce the risk of the spread of infection. Staff did not wear appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE).

Staff supported people to have maximum possible choice, control, to be independent and they had control over their own lives. People were supported by staff to pursue their interests.

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

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

Right Care

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

Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. The service worked well with other agencies to do so. However, we found that not all staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse.

The provider did not ensure all staff working with people were appropriately trained to meet people’s needs and keep them safe.

People could communicate with staff and understood information given to them because staff supported them consistently and understood their individual communication needs. Further consideration needed to how individual people communicated, which would enable people to have a wider choice in all aspects of their life and on different topics.

People’s care and support plans reflected their needs and this promoted their wellbeing and enjoyment of life. Although some of the language within the care plans was not always respectful and did not always reflect the least restrictive measures to people’s freedom.

Right culture

People’s quality of support was not always enhanced by the providers quality assurance systems in place. Actions were not always documented, and it was unclear if these were completed. This had an impact on people’s care.

People were supported by staff who understood best practice in relation to supporting people with a learning disability, however there were areas of improvement needed in relation to training and ensuring staff had the right skills.

People and those important to them, were involved in planning their care, although they felt that at times the provider did not offer consistent communication.

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 29 January 2021 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.

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.