The Bridges

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• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

This means we looked for evidence that the service involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

This is the first assessment for this newly registered service. This key question has been rated good. This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care.

Staff treated clients with compassion and kindness. They respected clients’ privacy and dignity. They understood the individual needs of clients and supported clients to understand and manage their care, treatment or condition. Staff involved clients in care planning and risk assessment and actively sought their feedback on the quality of care provided. Staff informed and involved families and carers appropriately.

This service scored 80 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service always treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

Clients we spoke with were extremely positive about staff and told us they felt that staff respected their privacy and dignity.

During our assessment we spoke with 6 staff, including the registered manager, head of residential services, treatment lead, administrator, resettlement worker and counsellor. They told us all clients were treated as individuals, empowered and supported to be leaders in their treatment and recovery. Staff understood the individual needs of clients, including their personal, cultural, social and religious needs.

We received some positive feedback from external partners who told us the staff group care, encourage and support both clients and staff. The probation service told us that they had a positive working relationship with the service, ‘operational issues swiftly resolved’ and told us ‘the work they do with clients is amazing’.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They took account of people’s strengths, goals, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

Clients were fully involved in creating their plan of care and individual goals. Staff spoke to us about making adjustments for clients to meet their needs, for example a shared room would be considered if a person required some additional support and increased level of support and observations could be agreed to provide this. The service could not cater for clients with mobility issues due to the bedrooms being on the first floor so this was a clear exclusion criteria. Staff told us they had access to interpreters and external services to support physical health needs. We saw evidence of support for the LGBT+ community, the service were celebrating pride month and displayed information regarding this. Anyone could access a weekly LGBT+ support group online.

We reviewed 5 care plans that were person centred and developed dependent on the client’s spiritual needs, physical health needs and mental health needs. Community meeting minutes showed that the service asked clients about safety in the ward environment, restrictions and other improvements that could be made to ensure that the service supported individual needs as much as possible in line with the contract and treatment rules.

We scored the service as 4. The evidence showed an exceptional standard. The service was exceptional at promoting people’s independence, so people knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

People were supported to maintain relationships. Staff encouraged and developed ways for people to access things that were important to them, for example, cultural and spiritual support. Staff signposted clients to supportive services within the community such as mutual aid groups and local organisations and the service supported them to attend.

The service delivered a comprehensive treatment programme in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines and the therapeutic quality and training teams were also looking to implement separate groups for therapy from a trauma informed perspective.

Staff supported people to communicate and make informed decisions about their care. Staff undertook a range of learning and development opportunities, at staff request, to develop ways to improve care delivery such as Trauma Informed Training, Boundaries & Professional Practice, 12 Step Awareness, Introduction to Motivational Enhancement Therapy and Motivational Interviewing, Substance Awareness and Working with Clients within the Criminal Justice System.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service listened to and understood people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff responded to people’s needs in the moment and acted to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress.

The clients we spoke with said staff were available when they needed them for support and were helpful.

Staff we spoke with told us there were clear processes in place to deal with people’s immediate needs, especially if they were in pain, discomfort, or distress.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff, and supported and enabled staff to always deliver person-centred care.

The staff we interviewed spoke positively about the service, leaders, and managers. The service had an on-call process which outlined the event and the response and actions that staff should take.

Staff told us that the treatment lead was always available to offer support. Staff worked well together, and they were proud of the service being delivered.

Staff were positive about training and development and had opportunities to give feedback on the service and undertake learning. Staff attended team meetings, had regular reviews and appraisals of their work.

The service conducted an annual colleague engagement survey and used results to make improvements. The service had equality, diversity and inclusion champions and employee resource groups included those for women, people with disabilities and LGBT+ individuals.