Archived: Midway Care Midway Support Services

Updated 24 August 2015

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This inspection took place on 11 and 16 June 2015 and the inspection was announced. The inspection was undertaken by one inspector.

In planning our inspection, we looked at the information we held about the service. This included notifications received from the provider about deaths, accidents/incidents and safeguarding alerts which they are required to send us by law. We contacted the local authorities that purchase the care on behalf of people, to see what information they held about the service and we used this information to inform our inspection.

We visited the homes of three people and spoke on the telephone with one person that used the service. We also spoke on the telephone with four relatives. We met with the manager, provider’s representative and six staff members. We looked at safeguarding and complaints records and sampled four people’s care records. This included medication administration records and daily reports. We also looked at the recruitment records of three care staff and looked at quality assurance records.

Updated 24 August 2015

This was an announced inspection which took place on 11 and 16 June 2015. We gave the provider 48 hours’ notice that we would be visiting the service. This was because the service provides domiciliary service within supported living services and we wanted to be sure that staff would be available to assist with the inspection.

Midway Support Services specialises in supporting young adults with learning and physical disabilities. At the time of our inspection the service was supporting 16 people in provision across Birmingham and Warwickshire.

At out last inspection in June 2014 there were two areas where the service was not meeting regulations. These related to the monitoring of the service, and the management of medicines. We found the provider had improved the systems in place for the management of medicines and the manager was making progress on ensuring effective systems were in place to assess, monitor and improve the quality and safety of the service provided.

A registered manager is required to manage this service. A new manager was appointed in March 2015 and at the time of our inspection they were in the process of registering with us. 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 received a safe service, procedures were in place to reduce the risk of harm to people and staff were trained and knew how to report and deal with issues regarding people’s safety.

People received their medicines as prescribed and safe systems were in place to manage people’s medicines.

Training and supervision was provided for staff, to ensure they were able to perform their role well.

People enjoyed their food and had a choice of food to ensure a healthy diet. People’s health care needs were met.

People received care from staff who were respectful and caring and ensured people’s privacy and dignity was maintained.

People were able to participate in various social activities if they wished. People were encouraged by staff to be independent and were confident their concerns would be listened to and acted upon.

The management structure had been strengthened and steps were taking place to ensure the monitoring of the service was more robust.