15 May 2017
During a routine inspection
West Supported is a domiciliary service providing personal care to people with learning disabilities. The service supports people to develop essential daily and community living skills. At the time of our inspection there were seven people using the service.
The service had a registered manager in post at the time of our inspection. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) 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 staff were aware of risk assessments and the safeguarding processes. Personalised risk assessments were in place to reduce the risk of harm to people and were reviewed regularly. Incidents were recorded and the causes of these analysed so that preventative action could be taken to reduce the likelihood of re-occurrences. People received their medicines as they had been prescribed and there were robust procedures for the safe management of medicines.
There were sufficiently skilled and knowledgeable staff on duty throughout the day to provide for people’s assessed needs. Staff worked in a flexible manner to support people on different times and different days to support people to meet their needs. Robust recruitment and selection processes were in place and the manager had taken steps to ensure that staff were suitable to work with people who used the service.
All staff received training to ensure that they had the necessary skills to care for and support the people who lived at the service and were supported by supervision and appraisals.
People’s needs had been assessed before they began to use the service and they, their relatives and other healthcare professionals had been involved as required, in determining their support needs. People’s consent was gained before any care was provided.
People using the service were supported to make choices about what they did and decide what food and drink they wished to consume. Staff had supported people by providing information about healthy living choices.
Other health professionals were consulted as necessary by the service staff to support people to meet their individual health needs.
Staff were understanding, empathic and protected people’s dignity. People were treated with respect and supported with regard to their individual needs.
On-going assessments of people’s needs were planned and were also arranged with immediate effect if so required. Information was available to people and relatives about how they could make a complaint should they need to do so. There were reviews of the care provided with the person and family members as appropriate.
Staff meetings were arranged, so that staff could discuss and be involved with the smooth running of the service. People and their relatives were asked for feedback about the service to enable improvements to be made. The service had a statement of purpose and an effective quality assurance system was in place to monitor and plan the future delivery of the service.