Hampshire Lakes

The service provides care to people living in specialist 'extra care' housing. Extra care housing is purpose- built or adapted single household accommodation in a shared site or building. The accommodation is bought or rented, and is the occupant's own home. People's care and housing are provided under separate agreements; this inspection looked at their personal care arrangements. Hampshire Lakes is a purpose built retirement village which provides 'extra care' housing. There is also a residential care home on site which is registered with CQC as a separate location. At the time of our inspection the service was providing personal care to nine older people with a variety of care needs, including people living with physical frailty or memory loss due to the progression of age.

There was a registered manager at the home. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are 'registered persons'. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated regulations about how the service is run.

There were sufficient staff in place to meet people's needs. The registered manager had arranged staffing so there were staff available on site during the day who could respond to emergencies when called, attend healthcare appointments with people upon request and carry out additional care calls if people were not feeling well. The registered manager was also trained to deliver care and frequently worked alongside staff.

The service followed robust recruitment process to help ensure that suitable staff were employed to work with people. New staff received a training programme which was in line with national standards. Existing staff received regular updates of their training to help ensure they were following current best practice. New staff received a structured induction into their role which helped them settle in their job and also enabled the registered manager to assess their competence and working practice. Staff received regular ongoing support through supervision and meetings with the registered manager and they told us they felt valued in their role. The registered manager had invited people with real life experience of conditions relevant to the service to participate in staff training. This was in order to enrich staff's knowledge and empathy of the people they cared for.

People told us that staff were friendly, caring and that they respected their privacy and dignity. People told us that they were given choices about how they would like their care delivered and staff understood the legal requirements to gain consent from people before delivering care. Staff had also received training in safeguarding and understood their responsibilities in keeping people safe from harm.

Risks to individuals and staff were assessed, monitored and recorded in people's care plans. Staff were able to describe the steps required in order to keep people safe from the potential of harm during their personal care. People's care plans were detailed in identifying areas which they would like to remain independent in and people's preferred routines around their personal care.

People's needs were regularly reviewed. The registered manager frequently visited people to gain their feedback about the service and they were open to making changes to meet people's changing needs. The registered manager had also developed a questionnaire that was due to be sent to people asking them to feed back about the quality of the service provided. The service had not received any formal complaints at the time of inspection, but the provider had a process in place where senior managers would have oversight of the complaints process to help ensure issues were appropriately resolved.

Most people were independent in their medicines and eating and drinking. The level of support they required in these areas was identified within their care plans. Most people were independently able to access healthcare services when required, but the registered manger had frequently arranged care at short notice to facilitate appointments or adjusted people's care visits upon request as they were required to attend healthcare appointments.

The registered manger encouraged people to participate in on site services and activities to help promote their health and wellbeing. They had also facilitated a support group for people affected by living with Parkinson's disease.

The provider was developing a quality assurance tool which would assess the quality and safety of the service. This had been developed to make it more suitable for domiciliary care, as opposed to the format the provider had previously used which was based on residential care settings.

The five questions we ask about services and what we found