We are With You - Darlington

Updated 12 July 2022

We Are With You (formerly Addaction) deliver 81 services across England and Scotland. We Are With You work with adults and young people, in community settings, in prisons, in residential rehab and through outreach.

We Are With You Darlington provides specialist community substance misuse services for adults which include substitute prescribing, a needle and syringe exchange service and recovery coordination.

People can access the service via drop-in, self-referral or referral from a healthcare service such as GPs or by criminal justice services such as the police, probation or prisons.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission to carry out one regulated activity; treatment of disease, disorder or injury. The service has a registered manager who is also the contracts manager.

The service has not been previously inspected.

Updated 12 July 2022

We rated it as good because:

• The service provided safe care. The premises where clients were seen were safe and clean. Staff assessed and managed risk well and followed good practice with respect to safeguarding.
• Staff developed holistic, recovery-orientated 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. Staff engaged in clinical audit to evaluate the quality of care they provided.
• The team 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. 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 was well led, and the governance processes ensured that its procedures ran smoothly.

However:

• Clients who spoke with us said they wanted to have access to more therapeutic activities.
• Three of the seven clients we spoke with told us they were unaware of what their care plan was, which indicated they had not been offered a copy of it.
• Staff told us they were stressed due to the levels of their caseloads.

Updated 12 July 2022