Ballater House

The inspection was prompted due to concerns we had received relating to the safety of care being provided at one of the provider’s other services. We did not identify any of these concerns during our assessment.

We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. We identified the provider was meeting the standards of care set out in this guidance.

The provider was previously in breach of legal regulations in relation to safe care and treatment. Improvements were found at this assessment, and the provider is no longer in breach of this regulation.

At the time of our assessment, there was a newly appointed manager in place who had been working at the service for 4 days. Prior to this, the regional manager had been providing oversight and leadership to the staffing team. Therefore, we spoke with the regional manager alongside the newly appointed manager during the assessment to gain information about the running of the service.

Staff were aware of their responsibility to safeguard people from abuse, and there was a culture of learning from incidents to prevent reoccurrence.

There were enough staff to meet people’s individual and often complex care and wellbeing needs. Staff were recruited safely and were provided with the training they required to provide safe care to people. Medicine management, storage and administration processes were safe, and there was not an overuse of medicine to manage people’s behaviours or anxieties.

Comprehensive risk assessments were in place to guide staff on how to best support people. Staff worked with external partners to deliver holistic care to people and advocated for people when there were breakdowns in the support available to them.

Staff felt well supported and valued by the management team, and ideas for improvement put forward by them were actioned. There were robust quality monitoring and governance systems in place which identified areas for improvement. Any areas identified were resolved in a timely manner. The environment was hygienic, and environmental safety checks were completed regularly.