25 July 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Choices Housing Association is a care at home service providing personal care to 154 people at the time of the inspection. The service supported people across 13 extra care and supported living settings across Staffordshire, Shropshire and Stoke some of whom were living with dementia, mental and physical health needs, and learning disabilities.
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.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Right Support: 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. People's medicines were managed safely. However, we did identify the need for some improvements in the management of time-specific medicines, rotation of pain patches and medicines care plans, to ensure these reflected best practice. People were protected from the risk of abuse. The provider took a proactive approach to assessing and mitigating risks to people's safety. The provider was meeting the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. There were systems in place to identify when things went wrong.
Right Care: Care was person-centred and promoted people's dignity, privacy and human rights. There were enough staff on duty to meet people's needs. There was a system to monitor and assess the care provided. People achieved good outcomes from their care. The service worked collaboratively with other agencies to ensure people received the care they needed.
Right Culture: The ethos, values, attitudes and behaviours of leaders and care staff ensure people using services lead confident, inclusive and empowered lives. Management used questionnaires and meetings to take suggestions from people and acted on feedback. There was a culture of continuous learning. The management team understood their responsibilities under the duty of candour and was meeting these.
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 was good (published 12 July 2019).
Why we inspected
The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about management of medicines. A decision was made for us to inspect and examine those risks. We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from these concerns.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service is Good.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Choices Housing Association on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.