Archived: NAS Community Services (Hertfordshire)

NAS Community Services (Hertfordshire) is a supported living service providing personal care to 4 people. The service supports people with learning disabilities and autistic people.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

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:

People were not supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff did not support them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service did not support this practice. People did not always receive personalised care, but staff were aware of people's likes, dislikes, and preferences. It was evident that staff support was making a positive impact on people’s lives. The provider’s systems for monitoring the service were still being embedded into the service. We made a recommendation to the provider about this.

Right Care

A new manager had recently started, and they were working to review all risk plans to ensure the information was correct and to provide staff with sufficient information for staff to care for people in a safe way. There were inconsistencies in how staff were recording accidents and incidents which meant they were not always following up on actions correctly. People’s needs were assessed before care started. People were supported to eat well. People were supported to access healthcare services.

Right Culture

Staff members knew the people they supported well. Staff understood people’s individual needs. People’s independence, privacy and dignity were supported and promoted by staff.

We recommend the provider review training to ensure staff have the necessary skills to support people to develop more meaningful relationships.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service under the previous provider was good (published 12 November 2017).

Why we inspected

This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.

Enforcement and Recommendations

We made 2 recommendations to the provider to embed their monitoring to ensure care is consistent and to provide staff training.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.