Anika Care

People's experience of the service and what we found: 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 that most people take for granted. 'Right support, right care, right culture' is the guidance CQC follows to make assessment and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

Right Support Risks to people were not always well managed which meant risk of harm to people had not always been considered. There was no evidence that people had been harmed. There was evidence to demonstrate people had been supported with things which were important to them such as their interests, and staff knew people well. Medicines were not always well managed, this included lack of robust information for staff to follow in relation to 'as required' medicines.

People were supported to live in their own homes. There were adequate numbers of staff to support people.

Right Care People's care plans and risk assessments did not always provide robust guidance for staff to follow in relation to people's known health needs. This included how to support people with distressed behaviours to minimise the risks to themselves and staff. This meant people could be placed at risk as staff may not have information in relation to how known health conditions impact on people's needs, wishes and abilities. However, there was no evidence to demonstrate people had been harmed. People were supported and encouraged, promoting their independence.

There was a stable team of staff who knew people's needs and were kind and caring.

Right Culture The registered manager told us how they had communicated with staff and people using the service to ensure the culture within the service was open and inclusive.

People were not consistently supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff did not always support them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service did not support this practice.

The provider had systems in place to monitor the quality and safety within the service. However, these needed some improvement as they had not highlighted some of the issues we found. For example, concerns about the lack of care plans and risk assessments for people's known health conditions, a staff member being logged into two calls at the same time and lack of guidance for staff to follow in relation to 'as required' medicines. Where the provider's systems had highlighted concerns, the systems in place to action and follow up on these were not robust and did not evidence appropriate actions had been taken.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating The service was registered with us on 17 November 2021, and this is the first inspection.