Royal Mencap Society - Church Road

Updated 12 April 2019

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:

The inspection team consisted of one adult social care inspector.

Service and service type:

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:

We gave the service 12 hours' notice of the inspection visit because it is small and we wanted to make sure we visited at a time when some of the people who lived there and staff who support them would be in.

What we did:

Before the inspection we reviewed information we had received about the service since the last inspection. This included details about incidents the provider must notify us about, such as allegations of abuse. 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.

As part of the inspection we:

• Talked with three out of the four people who lived at the service

• Talked with two support staff, the registered manager and area manager

• Looked at three people’s care records

• Looked at the recruitment records for two staff members employed in the last 12 months

• Looked at supervision and training records for staff

• Reviewed medicine administration records for people and checked stocks against records

• Reviewed records of accidents, incidents and complaints

• Looked at audits and quality assurance reports.

After the inspection visit we received feedback from two relatives of people who used the service.

Updated 12 April 2019

About the service: Royal Mencap Society – Church Road is a residential care home that was providing personal care to four people with a learning disability at the time of the inspection.

People’s experience of using this service:

• People told us they liked living at the service; it felt like their home and staff were caring to them.

• There were care plans and risk assessments in place to provide guidance to staff in how to support people.

• People were encouraged to be independent, to work and to take part in activities and hobbies they were interested in.

• Staff were supported in their role through induction, supervision and training and told us they enjoyed working at the service.

• The registered manager and area manager knew the people and their care needs well.

• There were systems in place to monitor the quality of the service at a local and provider level. • The service benefitted from being part of a large organisation that supports people with a learning disability as the provider employed specialist staff to support services working with people with behaviours that can challenge. The provider also campaigned at a national level to improve the health outcomes for people with a learning disability and encouraged the service to take this work forward with local health professionals.

• The service met the characteristics of Good in all five areas and so the rating of the service is Good overall.

• More information is in the full report.

Rating at last inspection:

The last inspection took place on 10 August 2016 and was rated Good. The report was published on 5 September 2016.

Why we inspected:

This inspection was part of our scheduled plan of visiting services to check the safety and quality of care people received.

Follow up:

We will continue to monitor the service to ensure that people receive safe, compassionate, high quality care. Further inspections will be planned for future dates.