Last updated 24 April 2018
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This inspection took place on 9 February 2018 and was unannounced. This meant the provider did not know we were coming.

One adult social care inspector carried out the inspection.

Before the inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service. This included the notifications we had received from the provider. Notifications are changes, events or incidents the provider is legally required to let the Commission know about.

We contacted the local authority safeguarding and commissioning teams and Healthwatch. Healthwatch are the local consumer champion for health and social care services. We used their comments to support the planning of the inspection.

During the inspection we spoke in depth with people who lived in two of the provider’s six houses across Bishop Auckland. We spoke with the provider, day service manager and two support workers. We looked at a range of records including six people’s care and medicines records, four recruitment records and other records relating to the management of the service such as audits and surveys.