During an assessment under our new approach
Date of Assessment: 30 June 2026 to 2 July 2026. The service is a shared lives scheme. A shared lives scheme recruit, train and support self-employed shared lives carers who offer accommodation and support arrangements for people within their own family homes. This includes long term placements, short breaks and respite care. The service is registered to care for people with a learning disability and/or autistic people.
Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. At the time of our inspection, the service was supporting 20 people in long term placements who were in receipt of personal care. Only a small number of these 20 people were able to tell us about their care.
In this report, we sometimes refer to people using the service, the relatives of people using the service, shared lives carers who shared their homes with people and shared lives staff, including shared lives officers and the registered manager, who managed, monitored and coordinated the work of the shared lives carers. This assessment was carried out due to the age of the rating for the service.
We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’. This guidance supported judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choice, independence and access to local communities that most people take for granted.
Safe care was delivered to people. The care people received was assessed, planned for and reviewed. Individual risks to people were also managed safely. People and those important to them were involved with this process. However, improvements were needed to ensure care plans were detailed and contained all the information required about people’s care needs.
Medicines were managed safely. Infection control was considered. The principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 were understood. People’s end-of-life wishes and plans had been considered. People were protected from potential abuse.
People were treated in a kind and caring way by carers and staff they felt comfortable with who were safely recruited. Carers and staff had the skills and training to provide safe and effective support. The registered manager had identified refresher training was needed for some carers and had plans in place for this.
There were systems in place to monitor the quality of the service. People, relatives and carers felt listened to and involved with the service.