Archived: Branching Out (Young People's Service)

Updated 5 July 2017

Lifeline is a registered charity and a national provider of drug and alcohol services. Branching Out (Young People’s Service) is a substance misuse community based drug and alcohol service for young people up to the age of 21 years of age. The service is provided by Lifeline and funded by Public Health England.

The service is registered to provide the following regulated activity:

• Treatment of disease, disorder and injury.

Calderdale Council commissioned Branching Out to provide prevention, treatment and harm reduction interventions to young people who use alcohol, tobacco, drugs or solvents at any level and to those who are at risk of misusing substances. This includes both clinical and psychosocial interventions. At the time of our inspection, the service was working with 68 young people. The service also provides support for the families of young people experiencing difficulties with substance misuse.

The service has a registered manager who also has overall area management responsibilities for other Lifeline services. The operational manager for Branching Out was in the process of applying as registered manager for the service at the time of inspection.

When the Care Quality Commission last inspected the service in August 2016, we found that the service had breached regulations. We issued the provider with two requirement notices. These related to the following regulations under the Health and Social Care Act (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014:

• Regulation 9 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014 Person Centred Care
• Regulation 12 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014 Safe Care and Treatment

Updated 5 July 2017

We do not currently rate independent standalone substance misuse services.

• Following our last inspection in August 2016, we did not require or recommend any areas for improvement for caring, responsive or well led. Since that inspection, we have received no information that would cause us to re-inspect these key questions.
• During this most recent inspection, we found that the service had not fully addressed the issues that had previously resulted in regulatory breaches or recommendations following the August 2016 inspection.
• Staff did not regularly assess or review the possible risks for young people or ensure that identified risks were included in plans to effectively manage or mitigate them.
• Staff did not explore all areas in the young person’s life for the purpose of goal setting and achieving improved lifestyles. Recovery plans were not holistic and contained basic and limited goals.
• The manager was unable to provide information relating to the numbers of staff who had received a recent appraisal.

However,

• The provider had appointed a new manager two months prior to our inspection. The manager had carried out an audit on both risk management and recovery plans. The audit had clearly identified all the issues found during this inspection May 2017. The service had also improved their paperwork relating to both recovery plans and risk management since our previous inspection in August 2016. In response to the audit findings, all staff had training booked for the week following our inspection to improve the quality and effectiveness of both risk management and recovery planning.
• The service had implemented a system to identify and monitor mandatory training compliance. Overall staff mandatory training compliance was 96%.
• The previous inspection recommended that improvements were made relating to regular audits. This inspection evidenced that staff had undertaken regular audits to ensure clinical equipment was in date. The new manager had also completed an audit on the quality of records.
• Lone working practices had improved since the previous inspection. The service had systems in place, which staff followed to help ensure their safety.