SeeAbility South Gloucestershire Support Service

Updated 18 August 2025

Date of assessment 30 July to the 27 August 2025. SeeAbility South Gloucestershire Support Service is a supported living service and provides support to people with a learning disability and visual impairment so they can live as independently as possible. People’s care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for supported living. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided.

At the time of our inspection 8 people were receiving the regulated activity of personal care, 7 in Bradbury Court and 1 person in a supported living setting in Filton in South Gloucestershire. The service had been inspected in April 2020 as a home care agency. Since that inspection the service had added supported living to their registration. This is the first inspection under this service group.

We visited the office on 30 July, 12 August and 27 August 2025. This was a responsive assessment due to concerns shared with us about the care and support people were receiving from people, staff and the local authority. We looked at all the quality statements in safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led. There were 4 breaches of regulation in relation to safe care and treatment, staffing, good governance and submitting notifications to the Care Quality Commission. The overall rating for the service is requires improvement. We will be asking the provider to submit an action plan on how they will make improvements to the care and support provided to people.

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.

At this assessment we found people were supported to live independently with a core group of staff supporting them. People had access to health and social care professionals and maintained contact with people that were important to them. However, improvements were needed to ensure people’s goals and aspirations were being met and where risks had been identified, risk assessments did not always demonstrate that actions had been taken to keep people safe. Improvements were needed to ensure people’s medicines were stored safely.

A new manager started in May 2025 and was making improvements to the service. This was still being embedded and included communication with the staff team, ensuring staff were trained and competent to support people. They were aware improvements were needed to documentation including people’s daily records and care records.

Updated 18 August 2025

We spoke with 7 people who used the service and 2 relatives to support us in understanding people’s experiences. An expert by experience supported the inspection. An expert by experience is someone who has experience of this type of service. Not everyone was able to tell us about their experiences of care.

We received mixed views from people who used the service in respect of the support they received. Two people told us they did not always feel safe when agency staff were supporting them and there were times when they did not get the support they needed in a timely manner. This was because the floating staff (a member of staff that was not allocated to support a specific person) was supporting others or did not have the skills to support them with their medicines or competent in using the hoist. They also said they had recently been shouted at by a member of the staff team. The provider was completing an investigation into this. The two people told us the majority of staff were kind, and they were happy with their support.

People felt the staff were trained and knew them well. Comments included, “The staff know what they’re doing”, “Yes they are well trained but new starters need to be shown a bit more”, “Staff look after me well all the time”.

People were happy to show us their flats and were proud of their surroundings. People told us about the activities they were regularly doing. One person told us about music therapy and art therapy they had attended in the past and expressed that they missed this. It was not clear whether other options had been explored to enable them to pursue these interests.

People told us how they were supported to go out on their own or with other people living within the supported living service. Two people were being supported to go out shopping together on the day of the inspection. Another person had been supported to go to the local pub with another person. It was evident that people were supported to build friendships with the other tenants.

Feedback from relatives was positive about the care and support that was in place for people. This included learning new skills such as cooking, washing and ironing. A relative told us, “I'm so happy and appreciate everything the Henbury settinghave and are doing to give (name of person) a better life and as normal as possible”.Relatives confirmed there was regular communication from staff and the management of the service.