Newham Rise

Updated 11 April 2022

Change Grow Live – Newham rise is part of a national Change Grow Live provider who deliver a not-for-profit drug and alcohol treatment service. The service provides specialist community treatment and support for adults and young people affected by substance misuse who live in Newham. Services were delivered at three sites within the London borough of Newham.

GL Newham offered a range of services including initial advice; assessment and harm reduction services including needle exchange; prescribed medicines for alcohol and opiate detoxification and stabilisation; naloxone dispensing; group recovery programmes; one-to-one key working sessions, health and blood borne virus checks and hepatitis C testing. CGL Newham also provided an outreach service to engage certain groups, this included a homeless recovery team, a criminal justice team and a youth resilience team. The youth resilience team provided advice and support to clients aged 11-18 years old and their families impacted by substance misuse. This was the first inspection of CGL Newham rise. CGL have been running the integrated substance misuse service in the London Borough of Newham since the 1July 2014. During this time, they have established partnerships with health, social care, probation services, GPs and pharmacies to provide help and support to clients within the borough of Newham. The service received most of its funding from the local authority and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities for specialist practitioner roles, such as the criminal justice team and the homelessness recovery team.

The service is registered for the following regulated activity:

• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The service was registered on 5 February 2019. There was a registered manager at the service.

What people who use the service say

Clients told us that staff were kind, caring and genuinely interested in their wellbeing and recovery. Clients said staff were respectful, non-judgemental and provided care that met their needs. One client commented that the staff ‘helped them turn their life around and build up their self-confidence’, another said that ‘staff had done an amazing job in helping them to recover from opiates.

The service adapted contact with clients during the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic to virtual and telephone contact, to ensure that clients still received therapeutic interventions. Clients told us that they felt supported during that pandemic and they could receive advice from the staff about their medicines.

Updated 11 April 2022

The service provides specialist community treatment and support for adults and young people affected by substance misuse who live in Newham. This included community-based alcohol detoxification and an opiate substitute prescribing service. This was the first inspection of this service.

We rated it as good because:

• The service had enough staff, who knew the clients and received basic training to keep them safe from avoidable harm. Staff managed risks to clients well. They responded promptly to sudden deterioration in clients’ physical and mental health. Staff assessed and managed risk well and followed good practice with respect to safeguarding.
• The service provided safe care. The premises where clients were seen were safe and clean, well maintained and fit for purpose. The service had appropriate COVID-19 measures in place. The service managed client safety incidents well. Managers investigated incidents and shared lessons learned with the whole team.
• The service used systems and processes to safely prescribe, administer, record and store medicines. Staff regularly reviewed the effects of medications on each client's mental and physical health.
• Staff developed holistic, recovery-oriented care plans informed by a comprehensive assessment. They provided a range of treatments suitable to the needs of the clients and in line with national guidance about best practice. They ensured that clients had access to physical healthcare and supported clients to live healthier lives.
• The teams included or had access to the full range of specialists required to meet the needs of clients under their care. Managers ensured that these staff received training, supervision and appraisal. Staff worked well together as a multidisciplinary team and relevant services outside the organisation.
• Staff treated clients with compassion and kindness and understood the individual needs of clients, including those with protected characteristics. They actively involved clients in decisions and care planning.
• The service was easy to access. Staff planned and managed discharge well and had alternative pathways for people whose needs it could not meet.
• The service treated concerns and complaints seriously, investigated them and learned lessons from the results.
• Leaders had the skills, knowledge and experience to perform their roles, and were visible in the service and approachable for clients and staff.
• A restructuring of services was planned which would introduce a single point of entry to the service and bring down the higher number of cases some practitioners were managing.

However:

• At the time of inspection there was no clinical oversight of new referrals. The service had implemented a new system following our inspection.
• Managers could not give a timeframe as to when staff were due to complete their outstanding BLS training.
• The service was conducting local level audits, although they were behind with audits for assessments, case records and consent.
• Our findings from the other key questions demonstrated that governance processes could be made more robust in recording performance outcomes and improving some of the data systems.
• Staff did not have their own dedicated team meetings and internal governance team meetings were not minuted. This meant that the provider could not be assured that all information was shared with staff.
• The service’s risk register did not reflect all the current concerns about the delivery of the service, and we could not see where the risk register was reviewed. This meant that provider could not be assured that service risks were appropriately mitigated.

Updated 11 April 2022