Archived: Addaction - Penzance

We do not currently rate independent standalone substance misuse services.

We found the following areas of good practice:

• Clients gave positive feedback about their care. They told us they felt respected and supported. The service engaged people and considered equality and human rights by catering for and valuing clients’ differences . Staff provided clients with options for their recovery from a selection of evidence based psychological interventions and activities. Staff provided client led treatment with the emphasis being on the client regaining control of their life. There were no waiting lists for the service.

• The service had a strong ethos of working in partnership with other agencies to provide holistic care efficiently to support clients and their families. Collaboration with other agencies was a key part of the day-to-day work of the service.

• Staff were happy in their work. They had manageable caseloads. Staff felt supported by their managers and colleagues. They were appropriately trained, appraised, supervised, and attended regular staff meetings.

• The service was well equipped to look after the physical and emotional safety and wellbeing of clients. The service managed medicines safely.

• Governance structures were in place to ensure the smooth running and development of the service. There was an audit programme and the service was evolving and developing in response to learning from audits, incidents and complaints.

  However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• Staff did not always develop and update risk assessments and they did not currently plan for clients unexpectedly leaving treatment early. There were problems with the transfer of care records between the criminal justice bureau and the rest of the service, which meant records, including risk assessments, were not immediately available to staff who needed them. This was a breach of regulation and you can read more about at the end of the report.

• Although clients were involved in their care, they did not have copies of their recovery plans.

• There was no additional cover for staff absence. The sickness rate was 4.5%. Staff covered for colleagues who were absent from work and this led to them feeling pressured.

• There were no alarms in the building in Redruth although there were plans to install them. Staff at Redruth were concerned clients entered the building into a large open plan office and that this could potentially cause a breach of confidentiality. There were plans to change the layout to resolve this issue.