Archived: Helping Hands Essex

Updated 14 March 2018

Helping Hands Essex was registered with the Care Quality Commission in November 2014 and is a residential substance misuse facility based in Chelmsford, Essex. At the time of inspection, the service had a registered manager and a nominated individual. The service includes a five bedded residential house which is allocated to people who meet the accommodation requirements, mainly that they have been sober for seven days and have nowhere else to live. People must be committed to engaging with the treatment programme. Next door is the therapy centre where both residential and non-residential clients attend for daily therapy sessions.

Helping Hands provides ongoing abstinence based treatment, which integrates psycho-dynamic therapy, counselling, transactional analysis, trauma therapy, art therapy and mindfulness.

The service provides care and treatment for male and female clients between 18-65 who are deemed mentally and physically capable for recovery. Helping hands takes self-referrals and referrals from other agencies from the local area of mid Essex.

At the time of inspection the service had four clients living in the accommodation and 12 clients attending for day services.

Following a comprehensive inspection in March 2017, the service was found to be in breach of the following regulations:

• Regulation 15 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014: Premises and equipment: The service was not clean. Carpets were dirty; there were stains on the walls. Areas of the service were dusty and there were visible cobwebs in stairwells and corners. Areas of the service were not in good repair and required decorating to be finished.
• Regulation 17 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014: Good governance: The provider did not have a system in place to store client records in a safe way. The provider put sensitive client information at risk by the use of a social media messaging application. The provider did not provide staff with phones for business use, which meant sensitive client information was stored on personal phones and could not be monitored. The provider did not have a policy in place for the use of social media messaging applications and this was not covered explicitly in staff training. Staff did not complete records in full. There were gaps in assessments and risk assessments. Training records did not include all staff working within the service.
• Regulation 19 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014: Fit and proper persons employed: Managers did not have recent Disclosure and Barring checks completed for staff. Disclosure Barring Service checks completed in 2011 had not been updated to check staff were still safe to work with clients. Managers did not record if Disclosure Barring Service checks returned previous convictions and how this was risk assessed. Managers did not have all information relating to Disclosure Barring Service checks available at the service. The recruitment policy did not include guidance and the expectation regarding Disclosure Barring Service checks for staff. Staff files did not contain references, as outlined as a requirement in the recruitment policy.

We issued the provider with requirement notices for regulations 15 and 19.

We issued the provider with a warning notice for regulation 17.

The provider sent us an action plan which stated what improvements they would make to meet the regulations.

Updated 14 March 2018

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We do not currently rate independent standalone substance misuse services.

We found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• Ward areas were not clean and were not well maintained. There were stains on the walls and carpets and furniture were dirty. There were areas of damp in the lounge and decor was in need of updating.
• Staff did not complete risk assessments in full upon admission. They did not contain all relevant information. There were no management plans, stating how staff would manage identified risks.
• The service had continued to use social media messaging applications to communicate client information, despite receiving a warning notice following our comprehensive inspection. Support staff used personal mobile phones to share client information.

However, we also found the following areas of good practice:

• Managers had introduced systems to monitor staffs compliance with mandatory training. This was up-to-date and included all staff working at the service.
• The service had improved its recruitment processes. The provider requested references prior to staff starting employment. The service had a list of all staffs Disclosure Barring Service checks reference numbers. However, we could not find evidence of whether any staff with criminal convictions were risk assessed, as the provider did not keep copies of Disclosure Barring Service forms, or a log of if the DBS had any convictions listed.

Updated 9 March 2018

Substance misuse services