10 November 2022
During an inspection looking at part of the service
United Response – Newcastle DCA is a supported living service. At the time of the inspection they were providing care and support to 25 people spread over 10 supported living premises. The service provides support to people with learning or physical disabilities or autistic spectrum disorder.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.
The service was able to demonstrate how they were meeting the underpinning principles of Right support, right care, right culture. However, some improvements were required.
Right support:
People were supported by staff who focused on people's strengths and promoted what they could do. People could make choices and plan activities they preferred.
Medicines were managed safely. However, some improvements were needed in the records for medicines including handwritten records and when required medicines.
People were encouraged to be part of the community. Staff had a good understanding of people’s individual needs and encouraged them to reach their goals.
People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.
There was enough staff to support people in a person-centred way. Some agency staff had been used at times. However, the provider had a robust safe recruitment drive in place to fill vacant posts.
Right care:
Staff understood how to protect people from abuse and what they needed to do to report this. Staff followed safe infection prevention practice in people's homes.
Right culture:
People were supported by staff who understood best practice in relation to the wide range of strengths and needs people with a learning disability and/or autistic people may have. This meant people received compassionate and empowering support that was tailored to their needs.
The provider needed to improve record keeping across a number of areas and was going to review quality assurance systems to support this going forward.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection and update
The last rating for this service was good (published 15 January 2019).
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service. The inspection was also prompted in part due to concerns received about medicines, staffing and training and the care people received. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks.
We undertook a focused inspection. This report only covers our findings in relation to the Key Questions Safe, Effective and Well-Led.
For the key questions of Caring and Responsive which were not inspected, we used the rating awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has remained good. This is based on the findings at this inspection. We have made three recommendations in connection with medicines, infection prevention and control and training records.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for United Response - Newcastle DCA on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.