• Care Home
  • Care home

Richardson Duston Limited

Overall: Good read more about inspection ratings

23 Duston Road, Northampton, NN5 5AR (01604) 583567

Provided and run by:
Richardson Duston Limited

Important: The provider of this service changed - see old profile

Latest inspection summary

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Our current view of the service

Good

Updated 19 May 2025

Date of assessment: 29 and 30 May 2025. This service is a residential care home providing support for up to 11 adults of all ages, with learning disabilities and physical disabilities.

 

This was a responsive assessment, following an incident of potential avoidable harm.

 

The provider had systems in place to learn from events and had implemented actions, however, further development was required to explore all avenues available to improve outcomes of people’s support on all occasions.

 

The provider had systems to monitor and improve the service; however, staff practice did not always match the provider’s policies in areas such as medicines management, maintaining privacy and dignity and infection control.

 

The provider employed a multi-disciplinary team (MDT) which consisted of consultants from differing professions, which enabled the people using the service to access specialist support and care promptly. The team worked together effectively to improve outcomes for people using the service.

 

The provider supported people to maintain and develop their independence, treated people as individuals, and people who could take part verbally were involved in their assessment, development and formulation of their care. There was some room for improvement to adapt processes, such as helping people understand their rights, for people with different communication needs.

 

Staff and leaders were knowledgeable about their roles, accountability, responsibility and best practice. Staff felt supported and there were opportunities for staff to progress and be upskilled.

 

We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgments 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. We found that the provider was supporting people to the standards of this guidance.

 

People's experience of the service

Updated 19 May 2025

Feedback from people was mixed, but mostly positive. One person told us, “It’s great” and “I get to choose what I do and what I eat.” Another person told us they didn’t like the recent change in policy whereby staff couldn’t share meals with them anymore. Leaders explained that staff were still able to eat with people, but were required to bring their own food, which was misunderstood by some staff and people. We were assured that this was revisited with everyone to clarify the change, after receiving this feedback. Most people had personalised bedrooms, and they were able to access different activities based on their likes, dislikes and needs. This was still in development for some people where it was identified by the provider, prior to inspection, they weren’t accessing many meaningful activities.

 

There was mixed feedback from relatives in relation to communication. We found that overall, communication was good, and duty of candour was followed, however some relatives felt there was a delay in communication from the provider.

Relatives felt involved in the people’s care, including being part of care planning and the review process. There was positive feedback about staff who worked at the service, and we observed positive interactions between people and staff.

 

Most people were supported to achieve goals and aspirations, and one person told us, regarding developing their independence, they were involved with their medicines.

 

Where people could not directly tell us about their experience, we used observation to assess whether they received good care.