We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team: One inspector, an assistant inspector and an expert by experience carried out this inspection. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of service.

Service and service type: Stallcombe House is a care home. People in care homes receive accommodation and personal care. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are 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. The provider, registered manager and staff team did not know we would be visiting. We carried out the site visit of the inspection on 19 and 20 March 2019.

What we did:

We reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection in October

2016. This included details about incidents the provider must notify us about.

We assessed the information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection, we met with the 17 people living in the home. Some people had communication difficulties associated with their autism, so they were not able to fully talk with us about their experience of living in Stallcombe House. People looked relaxed and comfortable with the staff who supported them. We spoke with seven care staff, the registered manager and the head of the charity.

We reviewed a range of records. These included three people's care records and medication records. We also looked at two staff files around staff recruitment, training and supervision. We reviewed records relating to the management of the home and a variety of policies and procedures developed and implemented by the provider.

We asked the registered manager to send us further documents which included the training matrix for all staff, quality assurance checks completed by the provider and the service’s statement of purpose. We received and reviewed this information as part of our inspection.

We contacted seven relatives by telephone seeking their views of the service. You can see what they told us in the main body of the report.