Cole Bank Road

Updated 9 August 2022

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 Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection was undertaken by one inspector.

Service and service type

Cole Bank Road is a ‘care home’. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care as a single package under one contractual agreement. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

The service did not have a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. The current deputy manager had applied to become the registered manager at the time of inspection; however, this process had not completed at the time of writing. The deputy manager is acting in the capacity of manager at the time of writing. This means that the nominated individual is legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection

This inspection was unannounced.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we had received about the service. We sought feedback from the local authority and professionals who regularly visit the service. The provider had completed a provider information return on 12 June 2021. This is information we require providers to send us to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. We took this into account when we inspected the service and made the judgements in this report. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with two people who used the service and three relatives about their experience of the care provided. We also reviewed complaints, compliments and surveys, which gave us further insight into the quality of people's care and what it was like to live or work at Cole Bank Road. We also spoke with five members of staff including the operations manager, the deputy manager, and three care workers.

The Operations Manager supports the deputy manager to manage the home whilst the application process for registration is concluded.

We reviewed a range of records. This included five people’s care records and multiple medication records. We looked at five staff files in relation to recruitment and staff supervision. A variety of records relating to the management of the service, including policies and procedures were reviewed.

We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the Safe key question. We look at this in all care home inspections even if no concerns or risks have been identified. This is to provide assurance that the service can respond to COVID-19 and other infection outbreaks effectively.

After the inspection

We continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence found. We looked at training data and quality assurance records. The (Acting) manager sent us additional information including policies, governance meeting notes, health and safety audits as well as general audits. We spoke with one healthcare professional who regularly visits the service and one person’s social worker.

Updated 9 August 2022

About the service

Cole Bank Road is a residential care home providing personal care for up to seven people with a learning disability or autistic spectrum disorder. At the time of inspection six people were living in the home.

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 CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people.

The service was able to demonstrate how they were meeting some of the underpinning principles of right support, right care, right culture.

Right support

People were supported to have choice, staff supported people in the least restrictive way possible. The policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

The provider supported people to make choices, and have control over their own lives, such as what time they got up and went to bed.

Right care

We saw that staff were caring and promoted the people they were supporting dignity.

Right culture

Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it. Staff told us how they would recognise pain, distress and discomfort in people who could not verbally communicate.

People felt safe and staff had good knowledge of safeguarding processes.

Staff had been recruited safely.

There was a system in place to monitor staff contact with people in the form of daily logs to ensure continuity of care after shift changes. Care plans and risk assessments identified people’s support needs and staff had a good understanding of the support people needed.

Infection Controls were in accordance with good hygiene practices.

Leadership decisions about encouraging independence meant that people were encouraged to do as much as possible for themselves to promote independence.

People were treated with kindness and compassion. People felt well supported. People’s privacy and dignity was maintained.

People received person centred care. People, relatives and staff expressed confidence in the (Acting) manager. People, relatives and staff were given the opportunity to provide feedback. Audits took place to ensure the quality of the service was maintained.

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 11 March 2011. It was last Inspected on 09 December 2020 with an overall rating of ‘Good’.

Why we inspected

We undertook this inspection to assess that the service is applying the principles of Right support right care right culture. We inspected due to concerns about safeguarding and only looked at the Safe and Well-led key questions and we had concerning information we wanted to follow up on.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

The overall rating for the service has remained Good based on the findings of this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Cole Bank Road on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

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.