About the service Regus House is a supported living service providing personal care to people age 18 and over. People's care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for supported living; this inspection looked at people's personal care and support.
CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with 'personal care', this is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also take into account any wider social care provided.
At the time of this inspection two adults who had a range of care needs including learning disabilities and autistic spectrum disorder were using the service. Of these, both were receiving personal care.
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 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.
Based on our review of key questions Safe, Caring and Well led, the service was not able to demonstrate how they were meeting some of the underpinning principles of Right support, right care, right culture.
Right support:
People were not always adequately supported to have choice and control of their lives and they were not always provided with enough details to support their decision making. Improvements were needed to ensure the care plans provided consistent and clear guidance to staff on how to support people. People's feedback was requested but not always listened to and acted on.
As a result of the above shortfalls people were at risk of their human rights not being upheld.
Right care:
Staff did not always understand how to safeguard people from abuse and avoidable harm and safeguarding incidents were not reported to CQC.
We found concerns about restraint practices and lack of guidance for staff on how to use restrain as a last resort. Furthermore, not all staff when the use of restraint is appropriate, this put people at risk of methods that could cause harm rather than de-escalate situations. We asked the provider to mitigate the safeguarding risks we found during this inspection immediately. The provider sent us evidence of how the risk was addressed.
The management of medicines was not always safe. Preemployment checks were carried out to make sure staff were safe to work at the service.
Right culture:
Not all staff received training to carry out their roles safely. We received mixed feedback from people and health professionals' regarding the staff's skills and ability to meet people's needs at all the times. Staff did not always display the skills and knowledge to meet people’s needs. Records did not give a clear picture of incidents, triggers, or any analysis of learning to improve the service. People did not always feel they had choice and control within their homes. People did not always have choice in who provided their care.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection (and update):
The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 7 October 2021) and there were breaches in Regulation 11 (Need for Consent), Regulation 12 (Safe Care and Treatment) and Regulation 17 (Good Governance) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 and we issued requirement notices and warning notice. At the time of this inspection the provider was still within the time frame of becoming compliant with the regulations.The provider is due to be compliant with the Notice by 31 December 2021. We did not follow up the notice as part of this inspection.
The service rating has deteriorated to Inadequate.
Following this inspection, the service has been placed in Special Measures.
Why we inspected
We received concerns in relation to safeguarding service users from abuse and improper treatment. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe, caring and well-led only.
We reviewed the information we held about the service. No new areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.
The overall rating for the service has changed from requires improvement to inadequate. This is based on the findings at this inspection.
We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvement. Please see the safe, caring and well led sections of this report.
You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.
The provider has taken actions to mitigate the urgent risks and we asked for an action plan on how they will address the other concerns we identified.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Regus House on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement
We are mindful of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our regulatory function. This meant we took account of the exceptional circumstances arising as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic when considering what enforcement action was necessary and proportionate to keep people safe as a result of this inspection. We will continue to discharge our regulatory enforcement functions required to keep people safe and to hold providers to account where it is necessary for us to do so.
We have identified a new breach in relation to safeguarding service users from abuse and improper treatment, and two continued breaches in relation to safe care and treatment and good governance at this inspection.
Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.
Follow up
We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.
Special Measures
The overall rating for this service is ‘Inadequate’ and the service is therefore in ‘special measures’. This means we will keep the service under review and, if we do not propose to cancel the provider’s registration, we will re-inspect within 6 months to check for significant improvements.
If the provider has not made enough improvement within this timeframe, and there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall rating, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures. This will mean we will begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will usually lead to cancellation of their registration or to varying the conditions the registration.
For adult social care services, the maximum time for being in special measures will usually be no more than 12 months. If the service has demonstrated improvements when we inspect it. And it is no longer rated as inadequate for any of the five key questions it will no longer be in special measures.