Cambeck Close

Cambeck Close provides an overnight accommodation short break service for children and adults who live in Bury, who have a learning disability and complex healthcare needs and may have behaviour that challenges the service. The service provides personal and nursing care support for up to 3 children and 3 adults each night. Children and adults are accommodated separately in two three bedded adapted bungalows. At the time of our visit, 15 children and 17 adults were accessing the short breaks scheme and were allocated overnight stays throughout the year.

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: Cambeck Close is located in a residential area, within easy reach of local amenities. There were enough staff to meet people’s care and support needs and support people to take part in inhouse activities of their choice. However, it was not always possible to support people to go out during their respite stay due to problems in recruiting additional staff. Staff were safely recruited and completed the training required to carry out their roles.

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.

Right Care: People received their medicines as prescribed. We have made a recommendation to ensure all current medicines advice is available for staff and the medicines policy reflects practices at the service. The home was clean throughout, however the décor was tired in places. Repairs had been reported but took the provider’s estates department a long time to prioritise. A decorator was booked, and the WiFi was improved during our inspection. Staff used PPE appropriately.

People’s needs were assessed before they had their first respite stay. Staff contacted people’s families to ask if there had been any changes in people’s needs since their last respite stay and care plans were updated accordingly. Reviews of people’s needs were held, although some were behind schedule at the time of our inspection.

Care records identified people’s preferences, support needs and potential risks. Guidance was provided to support staff to manage these risks. People received kind and compassionate care. Staff respected people’s privacy and dignity. They understood and responded to people’s individual needs.

Right Culture: People were comfortable with the staff team supporting them. People’s cultural needs were being met. Staff provided feedback to people’s families after each respite stay. Professionals said the service was responsive to requests for support and there was good communication with Cambeck Close. Staff enjoyed working at the service and felt listened to by the management team. A quality assurance system was in place. Actions were completed where any issues had been identified.

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 30 November 2016).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

Recommendations

We have made a recommendation for managing medicines in line with best practice guidelines.

Follow Up

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

We had previously carried out an inspection in February 2013 of Cambeck Close short breaks scheme when we found the service had complied with all the regulations we reviewed.

Cambeck Close provides an overnight accommodation short break service to children and adults who live in Bury, who have a severe learning disability and complex healthcare needs and may have behaviour that challenges the service. Personal and nursing care support was provided. Children and Adults are accommodated separately in two three bedded adapted bungalows. At the time of our visit, 22 children and 20 adults were accessing the short breaks scheme and were allocated overnight stays throughout the year.

The service also provides personal care services to adults with learning disabilities in their own home. This arrangement is called ‘supported living’ because people are supported to live often in groups, in properties, which are provided by a housing association or other landlord. At the time of our inspection, the service provided 24 hour support to eleven people in four properties, in the Bury area. At the time of our visit to the short breaks scheme, two children and one adult were staying at the service. We also visited two of the four supported living houses were six people lived.

There was a registered manager in place at the service. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

People who were able told us that they felt safe at the service. Staff we spoke with told us that they had received training in safeguarding children and vulnerable adults. They knew what action to take if they had any concerns about a person being at risk of harm or poor practice.

Recruitment processes in the service were sufficiently robust to help ensure the protection of vulnerable people from the risks of unsuitable applicants being recruited.

We saw that there were sufficient staff available to meet people’s needs. No outside agency staff were used by the services. This meant that people who used the service received consistent support from a staff team who knew them well.

There were systems in place to ensure the safe administration of medicines and effective infection control practices. Staff had received the training they needed to support people safely and effectively.

We saw that the premises we visited were user friendly. They were well maintained, homely, brightly decorated and adapted to meet the needs of people with disabilities.

People told us and we saw that they were encouraged to eat healthily.

People had the access they needed to health and social care professionals.

The atmosphere in the services was relaxed and friendly and there was a good rapport between people who used the service and the staff supporting them.

We saw that those who used the services had person centred care records, which included easy read formats and photographs that helped people to be involved.

People had access to a range of activities that met their individual needs and were encouraged to be as independent as possible.

All the people we spoke with told us the registered manager and all the staff were approachable and would always listen and respond if they raised any concerns.

During this inspection, we contacted the commissioner and safeguarding teams at the local authority and Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). They raised no concerns about the service with us.

We saw that the service asked relatives for feedback about both services to check out what they thought about the quality of service their family member received. We saw twenty returned questionnaires and email responses about the service, which were overall positive.

We saw that the people staying at the service had complex disabilities and health care needs. This meant that they were unable to tell us about their experiences of receiving a service. However, we did see that the people were settled, received individual respectful support and responded positively to staff support.

We spoke with the relatives of two people who used service. They told us that they were consulted about the care needs of their relatives and that they agreed to the content of the care plans and risk assessments. One relative said about the service, 'It's a life line', 'I trust staff to care for [my relative]' and 'They [the staff] do a marvellous thing'. Relatives said they felt able to raise any concerns if they needed to.

We saw that there were sufficient staff available to meet people's needs. Staff were enthusiastic about their job and demonstrated a good understanding of providing individual support and safeguarding people.

The two bungalows were maintained appropriately, were homely and adapted to meet the needs of people with disabilities.