Archived: Hallwood Court Extra Care Housing Scheme

Hallwood Extra Care Housing is purpose adapted single household accommodation that is occupied under an agreement which gives exclusive possession of a home with its own front door to the people that live there. The accommodation is located in a building that also has a day centre which people from the local community can also attend. A kitchen provides meals to people living in the service if they so wish. The property is designed to enable and facilitate the delivery of personal care and support to people, now or when they need it in the future. The personal care service is provided by the staff based at the site and there are staff based at the scheme 24/7 who can deliver care in an emergency.

At the time of the inspection, the registered provider was delivering around 220 hours of support to people living in 17 apartments.

There was a registered manager with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) but they intended to relinquish this position. The service now has a new manager whose application for registration has been submitted to the CQC. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the 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 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

At the last inspection on 7 and March 2016, we found that the registered provider was not meeting legal requirements and there were a number of breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. The registered provider sent an action plan informing us of what changes they intended to make. On this inspection, we found that most of the improvements had been achieved.

Improvements had been made to the safety of care provided to people. We found that the records kept of medicines administered by care workers had improved and that people received their medicines as prescribed. Further improvements were required to ensure that risks to people’s health and safety were identified and appropriate management plans put in place.

Whilst some improvements had been made to the monitoring of the quality and safety of the service, a more robust oversight of this process was required to ensure that all shortfalls were identified and acted upon.

The registered provider had sent a quality questionnaire to everyone who received a service and the results of this were in the process of being analysed: positive feedback had been received. Meetings with people who used the service had been set up to seek their opinion and to keep them informed of any proposed changes. People knew how to make a complaint and were confident in this being responded to.

People said that the support they had from staff was excellent and that they were treated with dignity, respect and kindness. People continued to receive their care from the same consistent group of staff who knew them well and met all their physical, emotional and social needs. People were supported to participate in social activities or to attend lunch together. Continued improvement was required to ensure that records better reflected and identified the needs of individuals.

Safe recruitment procedures were followed and staff had the relevant checks from the Disclosure and Barring Service. Staff had received, or had planned, supervision and appraisal. People had received refresher training and direct observations to ensure that they remained skilled and competent. The policies and procedures to support staff in their work had been updated and were accessible for on-going guidance.

This was the first inspection since the service was registered in April 2014.

Hallwood Extra Care Housing is purpose adapted single household accommodation that is occupied under an agreement which gives exclusive possession of a home with its own front door to the people that live there. The accommodation is located in a building that also has a day centre which the local community use. A kitchen also provides meals to the people living in the service if they so wish. The property is designed to enable and facilitate the delivery of personal care and support to people, now or when they need it in the future. The personal care service is provided by the staff based at the site and there are staff based at the scheme who can deliver care in an emergency.

There was a registered manager with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) . A registered manager is a person who has registered with the 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 and associated Regulations about how the service is run. We were informed that the registered manager had no active management of the service and would be relinquishing this position imminently.

We found that the registered provider was not meeting legal requirements and there were a number of breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.

People said that the support they had from staff was exceptional and that they were treated with dignity, respect and compassion. They said that they received their care from a consistent group of staff who knew them well and met all their physical, emotional and social needs. However, records kept did not always clearly identity the needs of individuals.

We checked medicines management. We found that clear and accurate records were not being kept of medicines administered by care workers. Care plans and risk assessments did not support the safe handling of some people’s medicines.

Although there was a registered manager, they had not active involvement in the service. There were systems in place to monitor many aspects of the service but these had not been implemented. The registered provider had failed to notify the CQC about key safeguarding events within the service. There had been no monitoring of the quality and safety of the service such as management of medicines, daily records and care plans. People had not been asked about their opinion of the service provided.

Safe recruitment procedures were followed and staff had the relevant checks from the Disclosure and Barring Service. The service had received a number of staff transferred to them from another service. Staff had not been given regular supervision, appraisal and support. Their training needs had not been identified in order to improve their skills and competence.

People felt safe with the support they received from staff. There were safeguarding policies and procedures in place. Staff were knowledgeable about what actions they would take if abuse was suspected.