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 was carried out by one inspector.

Service and service type:

The Kent Autistic Trust - 14 High Street is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to younger adults with an autistic spectrum condition in supported living self-contained flats across Medway and Canterbury.

The service had managers 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 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care. We needed to be sure that they would be in.

Inspection site visit activity started on 18 February 2019 and ended on 11 March 2019. We visited the office location on 18 February 2019 to see the managers and office staff; and to review care records and policies and procedures. We visited people in their flats and met staff providing support to people on 19 February 2019. We made telephone calls to staff and relatives between 20 February 2019 and 11 March 2019. We met with the management team on 13 March 2019 at their offices to provide feedback.

What we did:

Before the inspection the provider completed a Provider Information Return. Providers are required to send us key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. We took this into account when we inspected the service and made the judgements in this report. We reviewed the information we held about the service including previous inspection reports. We also looked at notifications about important events that had taken place in the service, which the provider is required to tell us by law. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

We spent time with four people who received a service. We also spent time speaking with one person. We spoke with two people’s relatives. One person’s relative left us written feedback. Some people were not able to verbally express their experiences of staying at the service. We observed staff interactions with people and observed care and support in communal areas.

We contacted health and social care professionals to obtain feedback about their experience of the service. These professionals included local authority commissioners and local authority safeguarding coordinators.

We spoke with 14 staff including; support workers, senior support workers, assistant managers, registered managers, the quality and compliance manager, the nominated individual for the provider and the business development manager.

We looked at five people’s personal records, care plans and people’s medicines charts, risk assessments, staff rotas, staff schedules, two staff recruitment records, meeting minutes, policies and procedures.

We asked the management team to send us additional information after the inspection. We asked for copies of the quality audits. These were received in a timely manner.