Archived: The Recovery Hub Ipswich

Updated 13 September 2019

The Recovery Hub Ipswich is a residential service which provides detoxification and rehabilitation for people dependent on drugs and alcohol. The programme is designed to support people through 12-step based therapy. The service accepts publicly and privately funded referrals. The service accepts male and female clients.

The Recovery Hub Ipswich has been registered with CQC since April 2016 to provide accommodation for persons who require treatment for substance misuse. The service has a registered manager in post.

The service provides 17 beds.

The service was last inspected in July 2018 and was found to be in breach of Regulation 12 Safe care and treatment;

The service was issued with requirement notices for regulation 12:

• The provider must ensure that the policy for detoxification matches practice.

• The provider must ensure that the detoxification policy specifies how often staff should complete observations of clients during detoxification.

During this inspection we found that the provider had made all the required improvements.

Updated 13 September 2019

We rated The Recovery Hub Ipswich as good because:

• The service had a sufficient number of staff to monitor clients for the first 24 hours of detoxification from both drugs and alcohol and for clients to receive weekly one to one keywork sessions.

• Staff completed a thorough risk assessment including risk of early exit from treatment and reviewed these in weekly sessions.

• Staff completed comprehensive assessment with clients on admission that included physical and mental health, accommodation and social needs. Staff screened clients before admission and only offered admitted them if it was safe to do so

• Staff collaborated with clients to set holistic personalised and recovery focussed care plans. The service offered a variety of treatment and therapies including 12-step therapy groups, cognitive behavioural therapy, relapse prevention and one to one keywork sessions.

• Clients told us that staff were caring, kind and went above and beyond expectation to help them. Staff helped clients understand their treatment and demonstrated that recovery was achievable.

• The service offered a monthly family group and individual family therapy interventions where required. Clients had positive feedback about the family therapy they had attended.

• The service offered weekly aftercare groups to clients after completion of treatment. Clients could attend these for as long as needed.

• Staff supported clients with resettlement plans including accommodation, financial support and employment.

• Staff told us they felt supported in their roles and were proud to work for the service. They had good morale and worked well as a team. 

However: 

• The service did not have good medicines management and administration procedures. There were not always two members of staff administering medicines as specified in their policy. Staff completed medicines administration training but were not signed off as competent by an experienced person prior to dispensing medicines.

• Sixty five percent of staff had completed the required mandatory training for them to complete their roles safely.

• Managers had oversight of supervision and training but had not identified or addressed the gaps in management supervision or the mandatory training compliance.

• Managers did not have sufficient oversight of detoxification and medicine administration to be aware of the issues we raised around these.

Updated 18 April 2018

We do not currently rate independent standalone substance misuse services.

We found the following areas of good practice:

• The provider had addressed most of the issues highlighted in the last CQC inspection report dated 21 August 2017.

• Managers had updated the detoxification policy to include all medications that may be used to detoxify a client. Staff recorded physical observations of clients and sent the information to non-medical prescribers. The non-medical prescribers reviewed observations and instructed staff if they needed to take action. Non-medical prescribers completed physical health assessments with clients on admission.

• Staff requested medical summaries from GP’s prior to a client’s admission to ensure there were no issues that would affect a detoxification

• Staff completed care plans with clients that were holistic and created to support individual needs. Staff completed them at admission and reviewed them weekly with clients as their treatment programme progressed.

However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• Staff did not assess if clients required blood borne virus (BBV) testing and support effectively. Staff left the blood borne virus section of assessments blank or provided limited information such as ‘all clear’.

• Managers had not audited the service effectively. Despite the variety of audits being completed, these had not identified gaps in care records.

Updated 13 September 2019