Advantage Healthcare West Midlands

We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed autistic people and people with a learning disability respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. At the time of our assessment 10 children with complex needs were receiving care. And 2 adults.

The assessment was prompted as part of the Care Quality Commission’s priorities. The service had not had an assessment in over 7 years. We also reviewed information received about the service from partners and the public.

The service demonstrated a strong commitment to delivering person-centred care and supporting adults and children safely within their own homes. Leadership was visible, responsive and focused on continuous improvement, with staff speaking positively about the support available to them and the organisation promoting a positive culture through wellbeing initiatives, learning opportunities and staff recognition programmes.

Comprehensive safeguarding policies for both children and adults were in place, covering key risks such as exploitation, neglect, consent, modern slavery, advocacy and professional boundaries. There was clear evidence of learning from incidents and lessons learnt were shared across the organisation to improve care delivery.

Staff training, competency assessments and specialist clinical support provided further assurance that people and children were cared for by suitably skilled staff.

People were supported in a personalised and inclusive way, with good examples of children and families being actively involved in care planning. Communication tools, accessible information and translation resources helped ensure people/ children could participate in decisions about their care. Positive examples reviewed demonstrated trusting relationships between care professionals, people and children receiving support and their families.

Governance systems were generally effective, with quality assurance processes, audits, improvement plans and senior management oversight in place. However, the assessment identified these systems had not always been effective in identifying or addressing concerns with medication documents. The most significant findings related to medication management, where inconsistencies were found between prescribed administration times and recorded administration times, a lack of clarity regarding responsibility for administering some medicines.