Medway RIVER Treatment and Recovery Service Also known as RIVER

Updated 28 October 2019

Turning Point - Medway, known as Medway Active Recovery Service, provides specialist community treatment and support for adults affected by substance misuse. The service is commissioned to provide treatment for people who live in Medway.

The service offers a range of services including initial advice; assessment and harm reduction services including needle exchange; prescribed medicines for alcohol and opiate detoxification and stabilisation; naloxone dispensing; group recovery programmes; one-to-one key working sessions and doctor and nurse clinics which includes health checks and blood borne virus hepatitis C testing.

The service has good partnership working in the local area and with other agencies, including social services, probation, GPs, pharmacies, education services and homeless charities/services.

There is a registered manager at the service.

The service registered with the Care Quality Commission on 4 December 2018, to provide the regulated activity treatment of disease, disorder and injury.

The service had undergone a contract re-structure in April 2018 and was previously registered with the Care Quality Commission under Turning Point Chatham. In December 2018, following several changes including location of service and service name, the provider re-registered.

This was Turning Point Medway’s first inspection since re-registering in December 2018, having previously been inspected under Turning Point Chatham.

Updated 28 October 2019

We rated Turning Point Medway as good because:

• The service provided safe care. The premises where clients were seen were safe and clean. The number of clients on the caseload of the teams, and of individual members of staff, was not too high to prevent staff from giving each client the time they needed. Staff assessed and managed risk well and followed good practice with respect to safeguarding.
• Staff developed holistic, recovery-oriented care plans informed by a comprehensive assessment. They provided a range of treatments suitable to the needs of the clients and in line with national guidance about best practice. Staff engaged in clinical audit to evaluate the quality of care they provided.
• The teams included or had access to the full range of specialists required to meet the needs of clients under their care. Managers ensured that these staff received training, supervision and appraisal. Staff worked well together as a multidisciplinary team and with relevant services outside the organisation.
• Staff treated clients with compassion and kindness and understood the individual needs of clients. They actively involved clients in decisions and care planning.
• The service was easy to access. Staff planned and managed discharge well and had alternative pathways for people whose needs it could not meet.
• The service was well led, and the majority of the governance processes ensured that its procedures ran smoothly.

However:

• Staff did not always record risks to clients. We reviewed six risk assessments and found two were not updated or reflective of all risks identified.
• The audit checks on client risk assessments had not identified the concerns we found during the inspection.

Updated 28 October 2019