Avenida Lodge

About the service

Avenida Lodge is part of Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and provides support for adults who live in their own homes in Eastbourne. Registered as a domiciliary care agency under Adult Social Care, it is inspected separately from the Trust, and supports people with autism, learning disabilities and mental health needs. At the time of inspection, the service was supporting 13 people. People using the service lived in their own homes across two blocks of flats, Acorn House and Mayfield Court.

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

Right Support:

People received support to achieve their aspirations and goals. The service worked with people to plan for when they experienced periods of distress so their freedoms were restricted only if there was no alternative. Staff recorded when people were restrained and constantly reviewed and learned from incidents and how they might be avoided or reduced. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported 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 kind and compassionate care. Staff protected and respected people’s privacy and dignity. They understood and responded to their individual needs. Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. 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. People’s care, treatment and support plans reflected their range of needs and this promoted their wellbeing and enjoyment of life.

Right Culture:

People were supported by staff who understood best practice in relation to the wide range of strengths, impairments or sensitivities people with a learning disability and/or autistic people may have. This meant people received compassionate and empowering care that was tailored to their needs. The registered manager worked hard to instil a culture of care in which staff truly valued and promoted people’s individuality, protected their rights and empowered people. People and those important to them were involved in planning their care. Staff evaluated the quality of support provided to people with the person, their family and other professionals.

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 13 December 2017).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service. We undertook a focused inspection on the safe and well led key questions. 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 good based on the findings of this inspection.

Follow up

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

This inspection took place on the 1and 2 August 2017 and was announced.

The registered manager was present during the inspection. 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.

Technical difficulties had meant that statutory notifications submitted by the registered provider had not been received by CQC, despite action taken by the registered provider to confirm the process for doing so with CQC. Since the inspection, the registered provider had arranged an alternative way to send notifications while this was being resolved.

People and their relatives were very positive about the support provided. They said the staff were friendly, encouraged them to be independent and kept people safe. Staff had a good understanding of people’s needs; they explained clearly how they supported people to make choices and have as much control over their lives as possible under risk based system.

Staff had attended safeguarding training and demonstrated a good understanding of supporting vulnerable people. If they had any concerns they reported them immediately to the registered manager or supervisors, who were on call at weekends and out of office hours. Medicines were managed appropriately and staff had attended training before they were able to assist people with medicines.

A robust recruitment procedure was in place to ensure only suitable people worked for the agency and, there were enough staff working for the agency to meet people’s needs.

Staff felt supported by management; there were systems in place to monitor and review the support provided and feedback was sought from people who used the agency, their relatives or representatives and health and social care professionals.