East Kent Substance Misuse Service - Thanet

Updated 21 May 2019

East Kent Substance Misuse Service Thanet provides specialist community treatment and support for adults affected by substance misuse. The service is one of five in East Kent provided by The Forward Trust. The Kent Drug and Alcohol Team funded treatment for the majority of clients at the service. Most of the referrals into the service were self-referrals. The service is commissioned to provide treatment for people who live in East Kent.

The service offers a range of services including initial advice; assessment and harm reduction services including needle exchange; prescribed medicine for alcohol and opiate detoxification; naloxone dispensing (emergency reversal of opiate overdose); group recovery programmes; one-to-one key working sessions and doctor and nurse clinics which included health checks and blood borne virus testing.

There is a registered manager at the service.

The service was last inspected on 14 November 2017 which was its second inspection since it registered with CQC on 1 May 2017. We issued the provider with one requirement notice. This related to the following regulations under the Health and Social Care Act (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014:

• Regulation 18 HSCA 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 Staffing

This was in relation to our inspection finding that staff did not receive appropriate support, training and development to enable them to fulfil the requirements of their role.

A requirement notice is issued by CQC when an inspection finds that the provider is not meeting essential standards of quality and safety.

On this inspection this requirement was met.

The service is registered to provide the activity treatment for disease, disorder and injury.

Updated 21 May 2019

We rated East Kent Substance Misuse Service Thanet as good because:

• The service had enough staff and provided safe care in a risk assessed and clean environment. Staff assessed client risk in collaboration with clients and relevant professionals.
• Staff followed the service’s prescribing and treatment policy and National Institute of Health and Care Excellence guidance in relation to clients receiving medically assisted treatment.
• Staff developed holistic, recovery-oriented, client centred care plans following completion of comprehensive assessments. A range of treatments were available to clients to meet their needs in line with national guidance.
• The team comprised of and had access to a range of skilled and trained professionals to meet clients’ needs. The service manager and team leader ensured that staff received training, regular clinical and managerial supervision and annual appraisals. Staff worked together as a multi-disciplinary team and with professionals in the wider community to deliver treatment and aftercare.
• Staff treated clients with kindness, respect, and understood the individual needs of their clients and their family members or carers.
• The service used internal and commissioned key performance indicators to monitor service outputs and outcomes.
• The service was well led and the governance processes in place ensured that the all processes ran smoothly.However:

• We reviewed five risk management plans and only one of them included risk management for a client in the event they exited from treatment early.

• There was no evidence in the five care plans we reviewed that clients had been offered a copy.

Updated 21 May 2019