Archived: Choice Support Aylesbury

At the last inspection on 30 June 2015 the service was rated Good. At this inspection we found that the service remained Good.

The service had a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons.’ Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

People using the service continued to receive safe care. Robust staff recruitment procedures were followed. The staffing levels met people’s needs. People were protected from the risk of harm and received their prescribed medicines safely.

People using the service continued to receive effective care. People received care from staff that had the appropriate knowledge and skills to meet their needs, and they were supported to maintain good health and nutrition. Staff were provided with a thorough induction and on-going training. They had attended a variety of training to ensure they were able to provide care that was based on current practice, when supporting people with behaviour that challenged the service. Staff received regular supervision and appraisal from their allocated supervisors.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service support this practice.

People using the service continued to receive care that respected their individuality. People were treated with kindness, compassion, dignity and empowered to be involved in making decisions about their lives. The staff respected people’s diversity, and knew the people who used the service well. People and relatives, where appropriate, were involved in the planning of their care and support. People had personalised plans of care in place to enable staff to provide consistent support in line with their preferences. People knew how to raise a concern or make a complaint and the provider had effective systems in place to manage complaints.

People benefitted from using a service that had a positive, person centred ethos and an open culture. People, their relatives and staff had confidence in the manager’s ability to provide consistent high quality managerial oversight and leadership. Established quality monitoring systems were used to drive continuous improvement.

We spoke with four members of staff who were all enthusiastic about their role as carers and support workers; they demonstrated that they all had the well-being of people who used the service as their primary goal.

We found that people that used the service were assessed for their needs and their care was planned and delivered safely. We saw that the staff were supported in their role and received training that would meet people's needs. We found that there were systems in place to monitor the quality of the service they provide.