Highbury House Mental Health Unit

Highbury House is a nursing home providing personal care and accommodation for up to 20 people. The service supports people with a variety of care needs including people detained under the Mental health act, people with Mental health needs, People with learning disabilities and autistic people. People who misuse drugs and alcohol and people with sensory impairment. The service supported both younger and older adults. The service was supporting 19 people at the time of this assessment.

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. ‘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.

Risk management required some improvement to ensure all potential risks had been assessed and considered to reduce the potential impact of these to people. The monitoring of people’s fluid intake was not always consistent, and escalation processes were not always in place. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.

Systems were in place to monitor the care provided to people and to ensure people’s records reflected their needs. An improvement plan was in place which was updated to include the feedback we shared during and following our inspection. Systems were in place to review incident and accidents, and action was taken to learn lessons from these. People were supported by staff who had been recruited safely and trained and understood how to protect people from abuse. People received their medicines when they needed them.