Archived: Lifeline Leicester Young People's Service

Updated 20 April 2016

Lifeline is a national provider of drug and alcohol services established in 1971. Lifeline currently employs 850 members of staff, 230 volunteers and has over 80 services across England.

Lifeline provides young people’s services, adult services, family support, criminal justice services, recovery services and harm reduction services.

Lifeline Leicester is a community based young people’s drug and alcohol service regulated to provide treatment of disease, disorder or injury and support substance misuse problems for young people up to 18 years of age within Leicester. At the time of inspection, 59 young people were accessing treatment.

Support and interventions offered included one-to-one sessions, brief advice and support, group work, physical health support and referral, sexual health services, and referral or signposting to other agencies. The staff worked from the central Leicester office and 33 outreach locations across the city centre.

The registered Manager of the service is Katherine Wood.

Updated 20 April 2016

We ask the same five questions of all the services we inspect: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs and well led? We normally rate each aspect of a service then give an overall rating. However, we do not yet rate substance misuse services.

We identified a number of areas of good practice within Lifeline Leicester young people’s drug and alcohol service.

• The service was clean and well laid out. The provider created areas for young people to relax and express themselves. This included a graffiti garage where young people could undertake supervised graffiti. The one-to-one rooms were quiet and confidential. 
• The staff updated notice boards to show service information such as sexual health testing, smoking cessation and local activities, groups and volunteering opportunities.
• There were enough staff available daily to support service user’s needs. The service provided a duty worker to see young people who required additional support outside of their appointment time or who attended the service requiring support or assessment on the day.

• Staff had good links and worked well with other local agencies, such as child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS), youth offending service, local schools, and social care teams. The service provided the majority of support as outreach and was accessing 33 venues across Leicester City centre where they could meet with young people.

• The service offered one to one and group support for families and carers of service users. This helped them to support the young people in reducing or managing their drug use.

However,

• Staff had not completed the cleaning log for the clinic room; the last recorded entry was April 2015 and historical clinical audits prior to November 2015 had been removed from the clinic room. There was no room temperature thermometer in place to ensure that STI tests and condoms were kept within the recommended storage temperature. The clinic room was left unlocked when not in use.

• Staff had not received all mandatory training outlined by the provider. Staff had also received no formal training in cannabis, alcohol or cocaine use to support young people in managing or reducing their use. Patients’ care plan goals were not holistic or specific and were not routinely updated.
• Supervision was not being carried out with staff monthly as outlined in the provider’s supervision policy.

Updated 20 April 2016

See Overall Summary