10 June 2021
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Iverna North is a supported living service providing personal care to people with a learning disability in shared housing. 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. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided. At the time of the inspection nine people were receiving personal care.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
This is inspection covered whether the service was meeting a warning notice in relation to infection control. We found enough improvements had been made to show the service had met the warning notice.
People said staff were wearing masks, gloves and aprons when they were supporting them.
Staff were seen to wear appropriate PPE (personal protective equipment) in people’s homes.
Staff said they had a plentiful supply of PPE and most had completed training in infection control. There was a plan to ensure staff who had not completed infection control training would do this within a short timeframe.
Staff followed guidelines to ensure visitors were safe to enter people’s homes. This included checking temperatures, requesting to see COVID-19 test results and asking if the visitor had been in contact with anyone with symptoms or who had tested positive.
Each house had an enhanced cleaning regime to ensure that high contact points were cleaned more than twice per day.
We expect health and social care providers to guarantee autistic people and people with a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right Support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people.
This inspection focussed on reviewing changes made since we last inspected and issued a warning notice in relation to safe care and infection control. Our judgement is limited to this specific area and ensuring care and support was being delivered in line with national guidance to keep people safe especially during the pandemic.
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 inadequate (report published 4 May 2021)
This inspection is a targeted inspection so the key question of safe was inspected but not rated.
Why we inspected
We undertook this targeted inspection to check whether the Warning Notice we previously served in relation to Regulation 12- safe care and treatment of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 had been met. The overall rating for the service has not changed following this targeted inspection and remains inadequate.
CQC have introduced targeted inspections to follow up on Warning Notices or to check specific concerns. They do not look at an entire key question, only the part of the key question we are specifically concerned about. Targeted inspections do not change the rating from the previous inspection. This is because they do not assess all areas of a key question.
Follow up
The overall rating for this service is ‘Inadequate’ and the service is therefore in ‘special measures’. This means we will keep the service under review and, if we do not propose to cancel the provider’s registration, we will re-inspect within 6 months to check for significant improvements.
If the provider has not made enough improvement within this timeframe. And there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall rating, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures. This will mean we will begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will usually lead to cancellation of their registration or to varying the conditions the registration.
For adult social care services, the maximum time for being in special measures will usually be no more than 12 months. If the service has demonstrated improvements when we inspect it. And it is no longer rated as inadequate for any of the five key questions it will no longer be in special measures.
If the provider has not made enough improvement within this timeframe. And there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures. This will mean we will begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will usually lead to cancellation of their registration or to varying the conditions the registration.
For adult social care services, the maximum time for being in special measures will usually be no more than 12 months. If the service has demonstrated improvements when we inspect it and it is no longer rated as inadequate for any of the five key questions it will no longer be in special measures.