Choices Healthcare Ltd Suffolk

This was a targeted inspection to follow up on the Warning Notice and check improvements had been made to mitigate the risk. We inspected but did not rate the key question of well-led and found that the provider had engaged with relevant partner agencies, was committed to developing the service, the level of risk had reduced and the specific concerns identified in the Warning Notice had been met.

However, the service remained in breach of the regulation as progress to make all necessary improvements to their governance and oversight arrangements was ongoing and due to some personnel changes this had impacted on the delivery timescales.

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 assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.

Right Support:

At our previous inspection we made a recommendation that the provider fully assesses the care and support provision at the service to embed the principles of right support, right care, right culture into care planning and delivery.

At this inspection we noted the provider was updating all their care plans and reviewing their exisiting training on learning disability and Autism for staff with consideration being given to staff receiving relevant training for their role. This included The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism. This is the government's preferred and recommended standardised training for health and social care to undertake.

Right Care: Improvements had been made to the provider's systems to assess and manage risks safely for people and were ongoing to support people to have maximum choice and control of their lives and for staff to support them in the least restritctive way possible and in their best interests; the polices and systems in the service to support this practice were also being reviewed.

Right Culture: Systems for auditing had been introduced but needed further development to consistently evidence and document the actions taken and where applicable lessons learnt. The provider was working to establish an open and transparent culture in service, discussing the outcomes of the last inspection and their improvement plans with staff, people, and relatives.

Overall feedback about the care people received was positive and on occasion where people had an issue the provider had acted appropriately to address this. People and relatives shared that the handover process when the live in carers changed over was not always a smooth transition and communication was still mixed at times from the office but moving in the right direction.

We noted that the provider was taking action to address the inconsistencies raised with handover and communication but it was too soon to assess the effectiveness of this during this inspection.