Francis House

Ratings - Substance misuse services

• Overall

  Good

• Safe

  Good

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Requires improvement

Our view of the service

We inspected Francis House on the 16 September 2025. Francis House is a residential substance misuse service with 18 beds in Southampton. It takes clients from the whole of the UK. This was a fully comprehensive inspection, looking at safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led. We rated the service as good overall, and good in every domain apart from well led. Well led was rated requires improvement. We found that medicines transport and storage were not always carried out in line with best practices or provider policy. Not all volunteers were checked by the disclose and barring service and we also found that there was no governance structure to support ongoing service development. This amounted to a breach of regulations.

We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.

People's experience of this service

We spoke with all 14 clients in the service. People said they felt safe and valued in the service. They felt that staff were kind and approachable. Clients said that the place was kept remarkably clean and the furnishings were of good quality. They said the staff were empathic about addiction and were compassionate to them. While the people we spoke with stated they were happy with their care, our assessment found elements of the care that did not meet the expected standards.