Archived: Catherine Care

Catherine Care is a supported living service providing personal care to 13 people living in their own homes. The service provides support to autistic people and people living with learning disabilities across 3 houses in Great Wyrley. People receive varying levels of support. The office is located at a separate address.

People’s experience of using this 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 assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

Quality checks were not always undertaken regularly and consistently. Quality systems in place were not always effective in identifying errors, for example medicines recording errors had not always been identified. Systems were not in place to undergo trends analysis of accidents and incidents to ensure patterns could be identified.

Right Support

People were supported by a sufficient number of staff to meet their needs safely. People were supported by staff who had been safely recruited. The principles of STOMP (stop over medicating people with learning disabilities) were applied when people were prescribed ‘as required’ medicines.

Right Care

People were supported by staff who made them feel safe. Staff had completed safeguarding training and understood how to protect people from abuse. Risk assessments were in place to guide staff how to manage risk to people. Staff ensured people received care in a way that mitigated risk. People were supported by staff who understood how to prevent and control infection.

Right Culture

The provider promoted a person-centred ethos which was disseminated amongst staff and helped to empower people and improve their quality of life. People, relatives and staff were involved in the service and encouraged to provide feedback to improve the quality of care provided. The provider took a reflective approach when things went wrong and took action to reduce the risk of reoccurrence. The new manager had taken immediate action to improve the provider’s systems and people and staff had told us improvements had already been seen. People felt listened to and able to approach the management team.

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 7 March 2019).

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to the management of medicines and staffing. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.

We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from this concern. Please see the Safe and Well Led sections of this full report.

For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has remained as Good.

Follow up

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

Not everyone using the service received a regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. At the time of this inspection nine people were receiving assistance with their personal care needs.

The service provides care and support to people living in three ‘supported living’ settings, so that 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; this inspection looked at people’s personal care and support.

People’s experience of using this service:

Although the registered manager was committed to improving people’s care, systems to provide oversight and to monitor and improve the quality of care people received needed strengthening.

We have made a recommendation about documenting when assessing people’s capacity.

Staff were aware of their responsibilities in keeping people safe. Recruitment processes meant that safe were recruited safely. There was enough staff to meet people’s needs. People received their medicines. People were protected from cross infection as suitable measures were in place.

People received personalised care that was responsive to their needs and had access to healthcare professionals when needed. The principles of the Mental Capacity Act (2005) were being followed.

People receiving support said that staff were nice and kind. People had a choice about their care whilst being supported to remain independent.

There was a registered manager in post who was approachable and supportive. The provider worked in partnership with other agencies and sought feedback from people who used the service to make improvements.

Staff were provided with relevant training and supervision so they had the skills to support the people they worked with.

Rating at last inspection: This is the first time Catherine Care have been inspected since registration.

Why we inspected: This was a scheduled inspection based on when they registered with us.