Pathways to Independance

People received safe, effective and person-centred support. Staff understood people’s individual needs and managed risks in ways that promoted independence, choice and control. Staff supported people safely with their medicines. When incidents or medicines errors happened, staff sought advice, investigated what had happened and took action to reduce the risk of them happening again.

People were involved in planning and reviewing their support. Care records reflected people’s health, communication and emotional wellbeing needs. Staff worked effectively with relatives, advocates and health and social care professionals. People received support to access healthcare, maintain important relationships and participate in their communities. They achieved meaningful outcomes, including greater independence, volunteering and reduced social isolation.

Staff treated people with kindness, dignity and respect and understood what mattered to them. Support was flexible and reflected people’s preferences, routines and communication needs. Feedback from people, relatives and professionals was positive. People felt safe, listened to and supported to make decisions.

Leaders monitored care quality, incidents, safeguarding, medicines and workforce matters. Staff felt supported and able to raise concerns. The provider already had learning disability and autism-specific training in place and was developing this further in response to feedback from staff. Governance reviews identified opportunities to improve how actions were tracked and followed through. Staff feedback and record reviews also identified opportunities to improve the timeliness of some care-record updates and experiences of support outside normal working hours.

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. The provider promoted people’s rights, dignity, independence and inclusion. People had choice and control, received support to take positive risks and led active lives in their own homes and communities.