30 January 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Continuum Care (Cornwall) provides supported living care for people with learning disabilities and domiciliary care for older people living in Falmouth, Camborne and Redruth areas of Cornwall.
At the time of our inspection 10 people were receiving supported living care and approximately 25 people were receiving personal care in their own homes from the domiciliary service. The CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Supported living service
We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.
Right Support:
The model of care maximised people’s choice control and independence. In each of the settings we visited people were able to choose what to do each day and staff respected those decision and choices. Staffing levels reflected people’s needs, and where additional staff were required to enable people to safely engage with more risky or challenging activities this was arranged. People were encouraged to do as much as possible for themselves and had been supported to gain the skills necessary to enable them to gain voluntary work placements.
People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. Staff and managers communicated with people effectively and supported people to make meaningful decisions and choices. Where people lacked capacity and there were restrictive care practices in place these practices had been reported to the local authority for authorisation by the court of protection.
Right Care:
Staff cared for the people they supported and understood their role in ensuring people were protected from all forms of abuse and discrimination. Staff took evident pleasure and pride in describing people’s recent achievements.
Right Culture:
The supported living service was well staffed. Relatives and health professionals were complimentary of the positive impact the service had on people’s welling, communication and quality of life.
Domiciliary care service
The provider had experienced challenges in relation to the recruitment of staff able to drive for the domiciliary care service. As a result, the provider was not currently accepting new packages of domiciliary care.
Staff rotas included appropriate travel time and people told us their carers normally arrived on time and stayed for the full duration of each visit. Missed visits had occurred infrequently and the service learned from these instances and identified the need for additional processes to be introduced in order to reduce the risk of visits being missed in future.
Staff in both divisions of the service staff were recruited safely and were well supported by their managers.
Quality assurance processes were effective and both divisions of the service regularly received compliments about the quality of care provided. The service communicated effectively and people and relatives knew how to contact the registered manager if necessary.
Medicines were managed safely and there were appropriate infection control procedures in place.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection and update
The last rating for the service was Good published on (4 June 2021). At this inspection the services rating has remained Good.
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by information we had received which indicated there had been a significant change in how the service operated, as the number of people receiving supported living care had significantly increased. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of Safe, responsive and Well-led only.
We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Continuum Care (Cornwall) on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Recommendations
We have recommended the provider seeks advice on how to ensure information is accurately transcribed into medicines administration records.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.