Archived: St Lucy Domiciliary Care

St Lucy Domiciliary Care is a small family run service for people with mental health support needs starting to manage their tenancies in the community. The service supports five people who live in accommodation in North London. The accommodation is separate from the support service and each person has their own tenancy agreement. The service offers a 24 hour support service with people using the service accessing it for support to complete daily living tasks. The service is registered to provide support to people with their personal care.

During the inspection the registered manager was not available. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

People were protected from harm and abuse. There was a high level of awareness from staff and people using the service of abuse and what it might look like and what to do if someone was worried about themselves or somebody else in the service. Staff were aware of the whistleblowing policy.

The care staff that we spoke to expressed an understanding of the scope of mental health support that people needed. We looked at training records in individual staff files and found a range of mandatory yearly training records.

Positive, caring relationships had been developed with people. From speaking to care staff, the deputy manager and the provider we saw that the ethos of the service was to help people move towards rehabilitation at their own pace. Care staff spoke about the people they supported with fondness and pride for the work people had put into remaining stable.

There was a culture of listening to people using the service and different opportunities for people to feedback what they thought and ideas they had. The service had a complaints policy and procedure in place which outlined how people can complain and response times. People received personalised care that was responsive to their individual needs and preferences. People told us that the service was responsive in changing the times of their support and accommodating last minute additional appointments when needed.

We saw that the management team were well respected and liked. People using the service and staff all without exception said they felt supported and trusted the management team. There was a monthly audit completed by the provider which covered the areas of safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led. Staff had regular supervision and appraisals and the records we looked at showed there were no gaps in the frequency of these, so continuous support was in place.

Care plans and other records showed that people's care was planned and described in a person-centred manner. We saw evidence that these were reviewed regularly with the involvement of the person concerned and relevant professionals.

We spoke with one person using the service They told us, "Staff are supportive and help me when I need it", and, "I like it here. If I didn't, I wouldn't stay." We observed people interacting with staff during our visit, and saw that staff supported people in a professional, friendly and supportive manner.

The provider had a safeguarding policy and procedure in place, and we saw evidence that staff had received safeguarding training. We also saw that people who used the service had been made aware about issues in relation to safeguarding. One person told us, "We understand safeguarding, and it is important that we report it."

We saw that medicines were stored, managed, recorded and administered appropriately. Staff had received training in the safe handling and administration of medicines.

We saw that there was an effective complaints system in place. People were supported to make complaints and knew what to do if they had a concern.