Archived: Midlands and North Regional Office

Updated 21 September 2017

Change, Grow, Live is a substance misuse provider that delivers substance misuse services across the country. Midlands and North Regional Office delivers community substance misuse services and provides opiate substitute medication, community detox and psychosocial treatment to clients.

Midlands and North Regional Office was registered with the Care Quality Commission on 6 August 2014 for the treatment of disease, disorder or injury and diagnostic and screening procedures. There were two registered managers for this location.

Midlands and North Regional Office had 47 sites that provided services under one registered location across the midlands and the north of England.

The sites that we visited were:

Manchester Integrated Drug and Alcohol Services (Carnarvon Street)

New Directions Nottinghamshire (Sherwood Street, Mansfield)

Inspire Blackburn

ReNew: Criminal Justice Hull

St Helens Integrated Recovery Service

We have inspected Midlands and North Regional Office on two separate occasions. We inspected two services in July 2015 following concerns raised by a whistleblower. We issued two requirement notices, which at the inspection in October 2016; we found the provider had taken the necessary actions to improve the delivery of care and treatment. The services inspected in July 2015 were taken over by another provider soon after our inspection.

The last comprehensive inspection took place in October 2016. We issued two requirement notices in relation to Regulation 12 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014 Safe care and treatment and Regulation 17 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014 Good governance.

Updated 21 September 2017

We do not currently rate independent standalone substance misuse services.

We inspected Midlands and North Regional Office on 2 and 3 August 2017. This was an unannounced, focused inspection to find out whether the service had made the required improvements since our last inspection on the 31 October 2016.

We found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• Clinical waste was not managed safely at Hull and Mansfield. Equipment at Manchester was not safe to use. Medicines were not stored safely or securely. The clinical hand washbasins at Mansfield and Hull were not compliant with the Department of Health guidance on infection control in the clinical environment. Staff had not completed a risk assessment to identify the risk of the spread of infection nor had actions been identified to mitigate the potential risks. Staff were not appropriately recording risks to clients.

• Staff could not be certain that they were meeting all clients’ needs and achieving their preferences.

• Some clients did not know how to complain.

• Monitoring systems in place were not effective in ensuring the safe storage of prescribed dressings. Monitoring systems in place were not effective in ensuring that the registered managers and the service managers had complete oversight of mandatory training, appraisals and disclosure and barring checks.

• Although some improvements had been made to issues identified at the last inspection, these improvements had not been made at all sites.

• Audit findings were not always acted upon.

However, we also found the following areas of good practice:

• Since our last inspection in October 2016, staff at Blackburn had reviewed and improved the management of clinical waste. At Manchester, the clinical hand washbasin had been replaced and met the required standards.

• Staff were knowledgeable about identifying safeguarding concerns and knew who to contact for advice within the organisation. We found evidence that staff made appropriate safeguarding referrals when needed.

• Staff knew how to handle complaints and records showed that overall complaints were processed in line with the provider’s policy. Since our last inspection, the recording of complaints had improved.

Updated 21 September 2017

See overall summary