Updated 3 November 2025
Date of assessment was 17 November 2025 to 25 November 2025. This assessment was announced 72 hours before we visited due to the size of the service and to ensure someone would be available to let us into the office to complete the assessment.
Cross House, which is also known as Headzpace, provides personal care and support to children and young adults in their own homes within the community. Many of the young people they support are living with a learning disability, autism, or both, and/or mental health needs. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only assess where people receive personal care.
At the time of our assessment, there were 11 people using the service. However, only 2 people who were receiving the regulated activity of personal care. We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted.
Cross House was last rated Inadequate (published 14 July 2025). This assessment was a comprehensive assessment, meaning we assessed all key questions. We carried out this assessment to check if the provider had met the requirements of the warning notice previously served in relation to good governance and because the service was in special measures. Our assessment found the warning notice had not been met and the provider continues to be in breach of regulation 17 good governance, and we identified a further breach during this assessment of regulation 13 safeguarding service users from abuse and improper treatment.
The provider remains in special measures. The purpose of special measures is to ensure that services providing inadequate care make significant improvements. Special measures provide a framework within which we use our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of the care they provide.
We found governance systems had not always identified quality concerns. There was no registered manager in post at the time of our assessment. We found there was poor oversight of the service to identify risks or concerns to make necessary improvements. Managers who completed audits, spot checks and internal inspections failed to always identify concerns and risks. Completed records of these checks and audits also demonstrated managers did not always have the experience, skills and knowledge to identify risks or required improvements.
Safeguarding incidents had not been reported to the local authority safeguarding team and reportable incidents had not been reported to CQC. Medicines were not always manged safely. The Mental Capacity Act was not always followed for people who were deemed to lack capacity. People were not always supported to ensure they had their health checks completed as required. Environmental checks had not always been completed in line with best practice guidance.
Some improvements had been made, people had detailed care plans in place for routines, positive behaviour support, accessing the community and communication. People were encouraged to learn new skills. Physical and chemical restraint incidents were reviewed with the staff team to learn from. Staff were kind and compassionate.