Archived: National Neurological Services

Updated 19 June 2019

The inspection:

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

Inspection team:

The inspection was carried out by one inspector.

Service and service type:

This service provides care and support to people living in a supported living' setting, so that they can live in their own home as independently as possible. People's care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for supported living; this inspection looked at people’s personal care and support.

The service did not have a manager registered with CQC. A registered manager and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided. An application had been made to CQC to register the manager.

Notice of inspection:

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small, and the manager is often out of the office. We needed to be sure that they would be in.

What we did:

Before the inspection, we looked at the information we held about the service. This information included statutory notifications the provider had sent to CQC. A notification is information about important events which the service is required to send us by law. We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return. This is information providers are required to send us with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. We used this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection, we visited the registered office and spoke with the manager and the nominated person. We also spoke with two people who used the service, one relative and two members of staff.

We looked at the care records and associated records for three people who used the service. We looked at a range of records relating to how the service was managed; these included staff training, induction and supervision records, quality assurance systems and policies and procedures. We also looked at the responses from the recent customer satisfaction survey.

Updated 19 June 2019

About the service:

National Neurological Services provide care and support for people living with mental health issues. At the time of the inspection they were supporting three people in their own home.

People’s experience of using this service:

People were happy about the way they were supported and made positive comments about staff. The manager considered the views of people, their relatives and staff about the quality of care provided and used the feedback to make improvements to the service.

People told us they felt safe and staff were kind and friendly. Safeguarding adults’ procedures were in place and staff understood how to protect people from abuse. Recruitment processes ensured new staff were suitable to work in the home. There were enough numbers of staff deployed to meet people's needs in a flexible way and to ensure their safety. People received their medicines when they needed them from staff who had been trained and had their competency checked. Risk assessments were carried out to enable people to retain their independence and receive support with minimum risk to themselves or others.

People were given choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. People’s care and support needs were assessed prior to them using the service to ensure their needs could be met. Arrangements were in place to ensure staff received ongoing training, supervision and support. People were supported at mealtimes in line with their support plan and had access to various healthcare professionals, when needed.

Staff spoke with people in a friendly manner. They knew about people backgrounds and about their routines and preferences. People, where possible, had been consulted about their care needs and had been involved in the support planning process. People had access to a range of activities in line with their support plan. People were aware of how they could raise any complaints or concerns if they needed to and had access to a complaint’s procedure.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection:

The service was registered with us in June 2018 and has not been rated before.

Why we inspected:

This was a planned inspection of a new service.

Follow up:

We will continue to monitor intelligence we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If any concerning information is received we may inspect sooner.