Archived: Manchester Disability Service

Updated 27 July 2015

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

The inspection took place over two days, on 24 and 25 February 2015. We gave 24 hours’ notice before the first day of the inspection. This was because we were visiting people in their homes and needed to let the staff know we were coming.

The inspection team was led by an adult social care inspector. They were accompanied on the first day by a specialist adviser, a nurse who had experience of working with people with acquired brain injuries.

Prior to the inspection we reviewed all the information we held about the service, including notifications received from and about the service since the previous inspection.

On the first day we visited two of the sites in north Manchester. We talked with five people in their bungalows. We met with the manager of the North projects (as the sites were called) and four care staff. We examined four care records in detail and looked at other records. On the second day we visited the main office in Chorlton south Manchester. We talked with three people living in one of the shared bungalows. We talked with the registered manager and with three care staff. We looked at one care record, staff rotas and three staff personnel files. We obtained copies of documents relating to training, supervision, audits, questionnaires, complaints and staff meetings.

Updated 27 July 2015

The inspection took place on 24 and 25 February 2015. We gave 24 hours’ notice before the first day of the inspection. The previous inspection of Manchester Disability Service had been on 30 January 2014 when we found the service was meeting legal requirements.

Manchester Disability Service is run by Manchester City Council to provide care for people with various kinds of physical disability and degenerative illness. The people using the service, who are referred to as customers[KL1] , rent their own flats or bungalows. The service provides assistance with their personal care in one site in Chorlton in south Manchester where there are 22 flats and two shared bungalows for four or six customers respectively with more complex health needs. There are three sites in the north of the city with altogether 21 bungalows for one or two people.

There was a registered manager in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission 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 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

We found that the service provided personalised care for the individuals they were supporting, who had a wide range of needs. The environment was safe, but we found that the use of a mobile warden service at night on one of the sites was not satisfactory and required improvement.

There were ways in which the environment in some of the sites could be made more sociable in order to reduce isolation.

We found that the service applied the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and obtained people’s consent where possible, but that there was some uncertainty from the providers as to whether and how to apply the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.

Some people benefited from a range of activities, but that was not true for all. Meetings were held at which customers were informed about any changes and could express their views.

The service had a good management structure. We were told about imminent changes which had caused some uncertainty amongst staff, but were now about to happen. The service conducted effective audits. There were a number of notifications which should have been submitted over the course of the year but we had not received.