Archived: Choice Support (Cheshire)

The Lady Verdin Trust Personalised Support provides a range of services to adults with a learning disability. People who use the service live in homes that are managed by a housing association or are privately owned. People are supported to be as independent as possible. Because of the differing support needs the level of staff support ranges from drop in visits to staff being on duty 24 hours a day. The offices for the service are located on the main Crewe to Nantwich road. At the time of the inspection 29 people living in 15 properties were receiving a service.

Personalised Support had a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The registered manager, (their job title within the organisation was community services director) was based in the office and had oversight of the service. Day to day management in the settings where support was provided was undertaken by five community support managers who each had responsibility for a number of properties and 14 support managers who all worked directly in people’s homes.

Because of their communication needs we were unable to ask all of the people receiving a service about whether they thought the staff members supporting them were caring. Those who did comment were positive about the staff members.

The service had a range of policies and procedures which helped staff refer to good practice and included guidance on the Mental Capacity Act 2005. This meant that the staff members were aware of people's rights to make their own decisions. They were also aware of the need to protect people's rights if they had difficulty in making decisions for themselves.

We asked staff members about training and they confirmed that they were receiving regular training. They described this as either their Diploma or their CPD [continuous professional development] training and that it was up to date.

We looked at a sample of the computerised care records in the office and four care files during the home visits undertaken. The files we saw explained what was important to the individual and how best to support them. This helped to ensure that people’s needs continued to be met.

Staff members we spoke with were positive about how the service was being managed. During the three home visits we observed them interacting with the people they were supporting in a professional, caring and friendly manner. All of the staff members we spoke with were positive about the service and the quality of the support being provided.

We found that the provider used a variety of methods in order to assess the quality of the service they were providing to people. These included asking the people themselves what they thought and regular audits on areas such as the care files, including risk assessments and staff training. The records were being maintained properly.

We looked at the care plans and risk assessments for four people and saw that they were person centred and regularly reviewed and updated.

We looked at the procedures in place for keeping people safe from harm and we saw that they were clear and the staff understood how to recognise the signs of abuse and use the systems in place.

We looked at the procedures in place to assess and monitor the quality of the service. We saw that these were organised and the views of the people who used the service were taken into account to make improvements.

We looked at a variety of records at the office and in people's homes and saw that these were regularly updated and stored appropriately.

Two people showed us their personal achievement records which included work on developing independent living skills.

One person told us they had just returned from working in a shop and gave us information on what they liked to do during the day and evening.

We spoke with one person who worked in a restaurant which was part of a housing trust site. They told us they loved what they did and were very happy working there.

Another person we spoke to told us they didn't have any complaints and were very happy.

We visited a person living with support in their own home. We spoke with the staff member supporting the person and they told us that the person had now settled into independent living very well and could articulate what they wanted to do and what made them happy.