Lifeways Community Care (Swindon)

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

In this key question we looked at the quality statement ‘Consent to Care and Treatment’. Staff understood the importance of seeking consent from people and gave examples of how they do this in their everyday role. We found assessments of people’s capacity were not always completed in line with legislation such as the Mental Capacity Act.

This service scored 75 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

We did not look at Assessing needs during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at Delivering evidence-based care and treatment during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at How staff, teams and services work together during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at Supporting people to live healthier lives during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at Monitoring and improving outcomes during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

People told us that staff always sought their consent before supporting them.

Staff understood the principles of the Mental Capacity Act and told us they always considered these when supporting people. Comments included "There are 5 principles. Always assume capacity, allow them to make unwise decisions, if you have to make a decision, you make the least restriction and make it in their best interest," and "It's there to protect the people we support. I always think with this, they've got capacity unless they are deemed not to. You have to support them to be as independent as they can, whether that be with prompting, aids or help."

Documentation around assessing people’s ability to make decisions was inconsistent and did not always follow the principles of the Mental Capacity Act. We found there was lots of reference to verbal communication in relation to people being able to make their own decisions, despite people being able to communicate in alternative ways. For example, one person’s record stated: Most of [person’s] communication is through sign or body language, and [person] has limited verbal communication. The person was assessed not to have capacity to make a decision because ‘[Person is] unable to verbally communicate, and it cannot be explained/shown to [person] in a way they will understand.’ There was no evidence this person had been supported to make the decision using sign or body language as per their care records.