Archived: Certitude London Shared Lives

Updated 23 May 2019

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. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team:

The inspection team consisted of one adult social care inspector.

Service and service type:

Lewisham Adult Placement Scheme is a shared lives service that recruits, trains and supports self-employed shared lives carers (carers) who offer accommodation and support arrangements for people with mental health conditions.

CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with 'personal care'. This includes help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection:

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small and we needed to be sure the registered manager would be available.

What we did:

Before the inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service. This included details about incidents the provider must tell us about, such as any safeguarding alerts they had raised. The provider also completed a provider information return (PIR). This is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We used this information to help inform our inspection planning.

During the inspection visit we spoke with the registered manager and two office staff. We reviewed a range of records including five people’s support plans and records and three carers’ files. We looked at training records for all staff and carers. We also reviewed other documents related to the running of the service such as meeting minutes, policies and procedures and audit records.

Following the inspection, we spoke with two people who used the service and one carer.

Updated 23 May 2019

About the service: Lewisham Adult Placement Scheme is a shared lives service that recruits, trains and supports self-employed shared lives carers (carers) who offer accommodation and support arrangements for people with mental health conditions. The service provides long term placements to people. At the time of the inspection, nine people were receiving support.

People’s experience of using this service:

People told us they felt safe and secure and had benefitted from being part of the scheme.

Staff and carers knew the people they supported well and how to keep them safe. At the same time, people were encouraged to be independent and risks were managed in the least restrictive way possible.

People’s needs and preferences were assessed and plans put in place. People were very involved in developing their own support plans and making decisions about the support they needed.

Appropriate recruitment checks were in place. Staff and carers had the skills, knowledge and experience to support people appropriately and benefitted from regular supervision and appraisal.

People were supported to access the community and participate in different kinds of activities.

The service worked closely with other health and social care professionals and other local organisations to promote people’s wellbeing.

The service was well managed and people felt confident in contacting the office staff and registered manager. People knew how to complain if they needed to.

Rating at last inspection: At the last inspection, we rated the service as Good and the report was published in October 2016.

Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating.

Follow up: We will continue to monitor intelligence we receive about the service until we return to visit per our re-inspection programme. If any concerning information is received we may inspect sooner.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk