Aldanat Care

About the service

Aldanat Care is a ‘supported living’ service providing personal care for 20 people. Support is primarily provided to people with learning disabilities and autistic people. People live in individual flats and shared houses across Essex. Some people live in the grounds of Peter House, in Manningtree, where there are also offices and training rooms. 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.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

Right Support

Care plans focused on people's strengths, however in placed needed to develop and build on people's goals and long-term aspirations.

Staff supported people with their medicines when they needed them.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. However, in some circumstances did not always consider the least restrictive measure.

Staff supported people to play an active role in maintaining their own health and wellbeing and enabled people to access specialist health and social care support in the community.

Right Care

The provider made sure that there was enough skilled staff to meet people's needs and keep them safe, as well as ensuring their met best practice guidance. Staff had training specifically for their role and they felt they were skilled to do their role. People were involved in recruitment. The provider was in the process of developing their training to deliver learning disability and autism and this was something that the provider planned to continue developing.

The service worked well with other agencies to do so. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it.

Right Culture

Professionals spoke highly about the responsiveness of staff, however they felt that the communication with the management needed to improve.

Staff felt supported and the management team were always available.

The registered manager had a good understanding of their responsibilities towards people they supported and had passion in delivering person centred care.

The provider had quality assurance systems in place, which ensured they were capturing the good practices as well as where improvements were needed.

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 16 June 2021)

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to closed culture and safeguarding risks to people. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of Safe, Effective and Well-led only.

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 the same based on the findings of this inspection.

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

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Aldanat Care 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.

Aldanat Care is a supported living service providing personal care for approximately 22 people. Support is primarily provided to people with learning disabilities and autistic people. People live in individual flats and shared houses across Essex, mostly in the Colchester and Tendring areas. Some people live in the grounds of Peter House, in Manningtree, where there are also offices and training rooms.

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.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

We received largely positive feedback from people and their families, staff and external professionals who were enthusiastic about the value of the service in people’s lives. We found the provider had addressed the areas of negative feedback which were raised during our inspection.

The last year had been challenging, however the provider had taken effective action and made improvements to promote the safety and wellbeing of people and the staff who supported them. They had enhanced their quality assurance processes, drawing from best practice guidance to provide better oversight. There was a positive focus on learning from mistakes and ensuring action was taken.

There were effective systems to support people to manage risk safely. The provider worked closely with external professionals to investigate safeguarding concerns and take action when mistakes happened. There were enough staff to support people and they had been recruited safely. Recent improvements provided staff with more support and guidance in their role.

People received support to take their medicines safely. The provider had effective measures to minimise the spread of infection, especially in relation to COVID-19.

Staff training and the quality of care plans had improved. In particular, the provider had invested in developing skills and resources to promote an understanding of positive behaviour support. Staff worked well with professionals to promote people’s health and wellbeing. People were supported to eat and drink in line with their personal and cultural preferences.

People received support from staff who knew them well. Staff were compassionate and respectful. People had a say in their care and staff promoted their independence.

Care was personalised and adapted flexibly in response to changing needs and preferences. Staff supported them to live full lives and achieve outcomes in a planned way. People received information in a way they could understand. People and their representatives felt able to complain and be confident their concerns would be listened to and acted upon. There were measures in place to help people consider their preferences around end of life care.

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; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

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 service was able to demonstrate how they were meeting the underpinning principles of Right support, right care, right culture.

Right support:

The model of care and setting maximises people’s choice, control and Independence. Aldanat Care offers an alternative for people who might otherwise be in more secure accommodation. This is in line with the principles of Right support, right care, right culture of “reducing inpatient care and supporting community-based options.” Professional feedback about the importance of this type of support was very positive. A professional told us, “Services like this support people to stay out of secure accommodation, which makes then so valuable.”

Right care:

Care is person-centred and promotes people’s dignity, privacy and human rights. People are treated as individuals and care is provided flexibly in line with their preferences.

Right culture:

The ethos, values, attitudes and behaviours of staff and management ensure people using services lead confident, inclusive and empowered lives. The leaders and staff of Aldanat Care share a passion for supporting people which shapes the culture across 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

This service was registered with us on 26/02/2020 and this is the first inspection. The service had been previously registered under a different registration; however we had not carried out an inspection and rated this service.

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection of a newly registered service.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.