Cheviots Childrens Centre

Cheviots Children's Centre provides a respite, short break and home sitting service for parents so that they can take a break from their caring role. The service provides personal care and support to children with learning disabilities including autism and complex physical disabilities within their own home. At the time of the inspection there was only one child receiving a service.

The home sitting service forms part of a combination of services to support and enable children and their families to lead ordinary family lives. 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

The relative that we spoke with was complimentary of the care and support that their child received. We were told of how they received support from two regular home sitters who knew their child very well and supported them safely and with dignity and respect.

Risk associated with each child's health and care needs had been identified and assessed with clear guidance available to staff on how these risks were to be managed to ensure their safety.

Currently the service was not supporting any children with medicine administration. However, systems were in place to ensure the safe management and administration of medicines where required.

Safe recruitment processes followed, enabled the service to recruit staff that had been assessed as safe to work with vulnerable children.

Home sitters were trained and skilled to safely and effectively support children with their needs. Home sitters received appropriate support to effectively deliver care.

Children were supported with eating and drinking where this was an identified and assessed need.

The service currently supported children and young people under the age of 18. At the time of the inspection the service was not supporting any child over the age of 16, therefore, the legal requirement to consider mental capacity and ability to make decisions was not required. However, care records had been signed by parents confirming that they had been involved in the planning of care and consented to the care and support that their child received.

Care plans were person centred and detailed. Children's support needs, likes and dislikes, the things they liked to do and how care and support was to be delivered was clearly documented within their care plan.

Parents knew who to speak with if they had a complaint and told us that their complaint would be addressed immediately.

Processes were in place to monitor and oversee the quality of care delivery. Where issues were identified these were addressed and discussed with the team to promote further learning and improvements.

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 4 August 2017).

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating.

inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

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.

Cheviots Childrens Centre provides short breaks and family support to children with learning disabilities including autism and complex physical needs. This includes providing parents with a home sitting service in the children's own home so that the parents can have a break from their caring role. The home sitting service forms part of a combination of services in order to support and enable children and their families to lead ordinary family lives. At the time of the inspection there were three children using the service.

At the last inspection, the service was rated ‘Good’.

At this inspection we found the service ‘Good’.

Policies and procedures about safeguarding children and young people were available to all including home carers and detailed the processes to be followed to protect children and young people from harm. Records confirmed and home carers told us that they had received training on how to safeguard young people and children and the steps they would take if abuse was suspected.

Risk assessments had been completed which identified environmental risks as well as risks associated with the child’s health and support needs. Risk assessments outlined the details of the risk, the signs to look for and ways in which the risk was to be reduced of mitigated in order to keep the child or young person safe from avoidable harm.

The service currently did not support anyone with medicine administration. However, policies and procedures were in place if this level of support was assessed to be required.

Safe and robust recruitment processes had been followed when recruiting home carers to work with vulnerable children and young adults.

All newly recruited home carers underwent induction and also received training as part of their on-going development. Home carers confirmed that they were regularly supported through supervision.

Care plans were person centred and gave detail about the child or young person, their likes and dislikes as well as information on how care and support was to be delivered. Each child or young person had been allocated a regular home carer with whom positive relationships had been established.

The service was registered to support children and young people under the age of 18. At the time of the inspection the service was not supporting anyone over the age of 16 years, therefore the legal requirement to consider people's mental capacity and ability to make decisions was not required. However, records confirmed that parents had signed all care planning documents confirming that they had consented to the care and support that their child received.

The service had a complaints policy in place which was also available as part of each child or young person’s care folder that was kept at the child’s or young person’s own home. The service confirmed that they had not received any formal complaints since the last inspection. Parents confirmed that they knew the processes to follow if they had any concerns and felt confident that there concerns would be addressed appropriately.

The service had a number of quality assurance systems in place to monitor and evaluate the quality of care provided which enabled the service to analyse the data in order to learn and make the appropriate improvements to the provision of care and support.

Further information about our findings is detailed in the sections below.

There were 10 children and young people using the home care service at the time of our inspection. We spoke with four families, staff and the management team at the service. When describing their child's care, one parent told us, 'As a parent it allows me to have a short break from direct care'. Another parent told us care workers attended to young people's needs well and described the relationship between staff and young people as , " caring, more like friends than staff."

The service respected and involved families in their care, and were developing meaningful ways of engaging children and young people. Care plans were updated annually with children or young people and their families as well as relevant health and social care professionals.

Required checks were received before staff were employed to work with children and young people. Managers regularly sought feedback from families and staff and acted on this to collaboratively improve the quality of the service provided. A family member said "whenever I have brought things up in the past they have listened and we have sorted it out."

Care planning and reviews took place regularly with involvement from people, and were signed as agreed by parents. We found that the staff understood children's care needs and how to protect them from risk and harm. All staff received appropriate training. Appropriate checks were being done by the provider to ensure that the records were appropriately maintained.