During an assessment under our new approach
Date of assessment: 3 July to 11 July 2025. Holland House provides care and support to people with learning disabilities or autistic spectrum disorder. There were 5 people were living at the service at the time of the inspection, in 1 adapted building. This was the maximum number of people the service could support.
We have assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements 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 the provider was meeting the Right support, right care, right culture guidance.
People were supported by a staff team who know them well. Staff had taken the time to understand people’s preferences, offering support in a calm but planned manner which helped ensure a calm environment. People had choice within their daily lives. Staff would facilitate any requests people made and promoted people’s independence within the home and when out in the community.
People were cared for with dignity and respect, staff understood how to safeguard people from abuse and were confident in raising concerns to the management team if needed. Staff were knowledgeable about ensuring people were not unlawfully restricted in their day to day lives.
People were supported to follow their interests and were also given the opportunity to try new activities and work towards their goals. Those who were more independent were provided with the resources to build confidence within the community, accessing local voluntary work and community groups. While those who needed more support were encouraged to learn and grow in ways that suited their individual needs, with staff who promoted inclusion and diversity.
Staff had been safely recruited and provided with the appropriate training to ensure they could do their jobs well. People’s medicine was managed safely, and their health was monitored so any concerns could be escalated quickly.
People’s needs had been assessed; however, care records did not always include all aspects of people’s support needs. Staff knew people well, so the quality and safety of people’s care had not been affected. However, due to the varying detail in both paper and electronic records it was sometimes difficult to understand the full extent of people’s care needs. The registered manager took feedback onboard during the inspection and started work to improve people’s care records.
Accidents and incidents had been recorded; these were reviewed by the management team who took action to review care and improve the service when needed. Staff told us they learnt from when things went wrong, however this learning was inconsistently recorded.
People’s risks were managed well. Audits were taking place to help monitor health and care standards in the service, however these needed expanding to ensure all areas of care were being effectively reviewed. Governance systems needed to be formalised, and records of all checks needed to be in place to help evidence good oversight within the service. The registered manager started to implement a new auditing tool as an outcome from the inspection, to help clearly evidence the governance in the service.
The management team were available daily to ensure support was in place for both people and staff. Staff told us managers were approachable and that they led with an ‘open door policy’. People, families and staff had been given the opportunity to be involved in the care planning process and had been given the opportunity to feedback about their care.