Via - New Beginnings - Brent

Updated 1 November 2019

WDP Brent – Willesden Centre is a community-based recovery and wellbeing centre provided by Westminster Drug Project. The service works in partnership with drug and alcohol services provided by a local NHS partner to form a service called New Beginnings. WDP Brent is the lead agency in this partnership. WDP Brent is one treatment system operating from two sites, WDP Cobbold Road and the Willesden Centre, to provide community-based alcohol and drug detoxification for residents in the London borough of Brent. Both WDP and the NHS partner employed outreach recovery workers for those that need assertive follow up.

There was no registered manager at the service. The service has a service manager who had applied to be the registered manager with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) prior to the inspection. The previous registered manager had been promoted within the provider organisation. The service is registered by the CQC to provide the regulated activity treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

This is the first inspection of the service since registration in April 2018.

Updated 1 November 2019

We rated WDP Brent - Willesden Centre as good because:

• The service provided safe care. The premises where clients were seen were safe and clean. The number of clients on each person’s caseloads was not too high to prevent staff from giving each client the time they needed. Staff assessed and managed risk well and followed good practice with respect to safeguarding.
• Staff worked well with their NHS partner to ensure clients had access to the full range of specialists required to meet their physical and mental health needs. Staff developed holistic, recovery-oriented care plans informed by a comprehensive assessment, with thorough contingency planning in place.
• Managers ensured that staff received training relevant to their role, as well as supervision and appraisal.
• Staff treated clients with compassion and kindness and understood their individual needs. They actively involved clients in decisions and care planning. Clients attended a local service user forum, which met monthly, in addition to a monthly strategic service user group across WDP.
• The service was easy to access. Staff planned and managed discharge well and had alternative pathways for people whose needs it could not meet.
• The service encouraged innovation and worked closely with its NHS partner to run Quality Improvements (QI) projects. Projects included reducing supervised consumption of controlled drugs and wellbeing training that included service users.

• The service participated in a provider wide reward card scheme to encourage clients to engage with the service.

However,

• The service had not completed any of the required statutory notifications in respect of service user deaths and allegations of abuse related to the service without delay, as required since registration with the Care Quality Commission in April 2018.

Updated 1 November 2019