Turning Point Drug and Alcohol Wellbeing Service - City of Westminster and RBKC

Ratings

• Overall

  Good

• Safe

  Good

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Outstanding

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Good

Our view of the service

Date of inspection: 6-8 May 2025.

Turning Point Drug and Alcohol Wellbeing Service - City of Westminster and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) registered with the Care Quality Commission on 24 June 2021 to provide treatment of disease, disorder or injury. It provides community-based substance misuse services in London and is run by Turning Point, a national not-for-profit provider.

The service operates from 3 hubs, with 2 located in Westminster (Wardour Street and Harrow Road) and 1 in Kensington and Chelsea (Acorn Hall).

This is our initial comprehensive inspection of the service. We rated it as good overall.

We found several areas of good and outstanding practice:

• The service had a well-established, highly skilled and experienced staff team who worked effectively with other teams and organisations.
• The service had fostered a culture where lived experience of staff and volunteers was recognised and valued. Clients had access to training, volunteering and employment and participated in decision-making.
• Staff were acutely aware of the risks of continued substance misuse and ensured people could access support without delay.
• Staff worked effectively to safeguard people from harm. The team's work was recognised by a London Homelessness Award in 2024.
• Staff were creative in supporting people to lead healthier lives. The service had developed an award-winning outdoor fitness programme.
• Clients, carers and partner agency stakeholders praised the staff as exceptionally kind, caring and compassionate.
• Staff delivered person-centred care and developed tailored services in partnership with people.
• Staff shared learning and worked across organisational boundaries effectively and creatively.
• Staff reported a positive, open and inclusive culture and leaders actively supported staff wellbeing.

We found some areas for improvement. These included some gaps in safety checks and feedback procedures at the Harrow Road hub, and the need to improve information about accessibility across the hubs. We raised these concerns with the leaders, who provided prompt assurance that these would be rectified, or mitigated, with immediate effect.