Voyage (DCA) Cambridge City

Updated 8 December 2023

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Inspection team

The inspection team consisted of 1 inspector and 2 Experts by Experience. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

Service and service type

This service provides care and support to people living in 12 ‘supported living’ settings, so that they can live as independently as possible. Two people were also supported on an outreach basis, in their own homes. People’s care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for supported living; this inspection looked at people’s personal care and support.

Registered Manager

This provider is required to have a registered manager to oversee the delivery of regulated activities at this location. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Registered managers and providers are legally responsible for how the service is run, for the quality and safety of the care provided and compliance with regulations.

At the time of our inspection there was a registered manager in post, however, they were on leave throughout the inspection. A branch manager from a different location was providing cover and they were supported by the wider management team, including the operations manager and operations director.

Notice of inspection

The inspection was announced. We gave the service a short period of notice of our intention to undertake an inspection. This was because we needed to ensure key staff would be available to speak with us and people would be at home when we visited.

Inspection activity started on 13 September 2023. We visited people living in 5 supported living settings on 24, 25 and 26 October 2023. We visited the location office on 08 November 2023, during which feedback was given.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed information we have received about the service. We sought feedback from the local authority contracts and safeguarding teams. We also used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return (PIR). This is information providers are required to send us annually with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. We used all this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We met 22 people receiving support from the service. Not everyone using the service was able to speak with us, so we spent time observing care provided in communal areas of their homes. We spoke by telephone with nine people's relatives, to seek their feedback about the care and support provided by the service. We also received written feedback from a further two relatives. We spoke with 23 members of staff via video call, spoke with an additional eight during our inspection visits and received feedback from a further 18 by email questionnaire. This included support workers, senior support workers, field support supervisors, field support managers, the branch manager (covering for the registered manager at the time of inspection), operations manager and operations director.

We reviewed a range of records. This included care plans and risk assessments for nine people, daily notes, and medication records for three people. We looked at two staff files in relation to recruitment and staff supervision. A variety of records relating to the management of the service, including policies and procedures were also reviewed. We continued to source information and clarification from the provider following our visits to the

Updated 8 December 2023

About the service

Voyage (DCA) Cambridge City is a supported living service providing personal care to people in their own homes. The service provides support to people with a learning disability and/or physical disability, and autistic people. At the time of our inspection there were 52 people using the service, who were all in receipt of the regulated activity of personal care.

People’s experience of the service and what we found:

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 assessment and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

Right Support: Care plans and risk assessments provided clear guidance to staff about how to support people in line with their needs and preferences. Healthcare professional guidance was followed to protect people from risks related to conditions such as epilepsy and diabetes and choking risks. People's privacy, dignity, choice and control, and their human rights were upheld. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests. We did find some examples where decision making had not been fully documented. However, upon speaking with staff and the management team, it was evident that the principles of the Mental Capacity Act had been followed. The provider updated these records during the course of our inspection.

Right Care: People received kind and compassionate care, which respected their privacy and dignity. Staff placed people’s wishes, needs and rights at the heart of what they did. Staff knew and understood people well and were passionate about supporting people to live their lives fully.

Right Culture: The management team provided clear leadership to their staff teams. People and their relatives and knew how to contact them if needing to discuss any concerns. Feedback was openly encouraged from people, their relatives and staff, and managers valued all contributions as a way of driving service improvement. There were effective governance systems in place which ensured effective oversight of the service.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was Good published 8th December 2017.

Why we inspected

The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about staffing, medicines management, restrictive practice, and poor culture amongst staff teams. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks.

We undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only. For those key question not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.

We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from these concerns.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Voyage (DCA) Cambridge City on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow Up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.