Aspire Specialised Supported Living Service

Aspire Specialised Supported Living Service is a supported living service providing personal care to up to 15 people with learning disabilities and autism. At the time of the inspection there was 14 people using the service.

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. 'Right support, right care, right culture' is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

People's experience of using this service and what we found

Right Support: People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests. Medicines were managed safely. Risk assessments included detailed information about people's needs and staff were knowledgeable about how to support people safely.

Right Care: Staffing levels were sufficient to meet people's needs. However, the provider acknowledged difficulties in recruiting staff and had therefore used regular agency staff to ensure people’s needs could be met. Systems were in place to safeguard people from the risk of abuse and people told us they felt safe with the staff who supported them. However, we did identify some safeguarding incidents which had not been reported to CQC. Incidents and accidents were reported, investigated and measures taken to mitigate future occurrences.

Right Culture: The provider had quality assurance and governance systems in place to assess, monitor, and improve the quality and safety of the service. We received mixed views from relatives and staff on support they received from the registered manager. Some people expressed they did not feel assured by the registered managers response in managing concerns whereas others felt very supported.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 30 June 2022).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions Safe and Well Led. For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.