• Care Home
  • Care home

Hillside

Overall: Requires improvement read more about inspection ratings

82 Pinner Road, Oxhey, Hertfordshire, WD19 4EH (01923) 245466

Provided and run by:
Watford And District Mencap Society

Report from 19 April 2024 assessment

Ratings

  • Overall

    Requires improvement

  • Safe

    Requires improvement

  • Effective

    Good

  • Caring

    Good

  • Responsive

    Good

  • Well-led

    Requires improvement

Our view of the service

Hillside is a residential care home. It provides accommodation and personal care to up to 8 people who are autistic or have a learning disability. The home has a garden and access to the local town. At the time of our assessment, there were 7 people living there. This was the first assessment carried out under our single assessment framework. Assessment activity took place between 7 May 2024 and 26 June 2024. We visited the service on 7 May 2024. This was an unannounced assessment. We looked at 15 quality statements: learning culture, safe systems, pathways and transitions, safeguarding, involving people to manage risk, safe environments, infection prevention and control, safe effective staffing, medicines optimisation, shared direction and culture, capable and inclusive leaders, freedom to speak up, governance, management and sustainability, learning, improvement and innovation, partnerships and communities and workforce equality, diversity and inclusion. We identified 2 breaches of regulation in relation to risk assessments and governance of the service. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment. We assessed whether the provider was meeting ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance, which is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people. We found the service offered people care and support in a safe, clean, well equipped, well-furnished and well-maintained environment that met their sensory and physical needs. Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. The service had enough appropriately skilled staff to meet people’s needs and keep them safe. Staff and people cooperated to assess risks they might face. Where appropriate, staff encouraged and enabled people to take positive risks. People received good quality care and support because trained staff could meet their needs and wishes.

People's experience of this service

People felt safe and received care from enough trained staff who understood their needs. People’s relatives felt involved in discussions about risk and whilst we did not see evidence of this in people’s records, we observed staff supporting people with positive risk taking. People were cared for in a clean, well-maintained environment. People’s medicines were not always managed well; we found some documents were missing from people’s records. People’s relatives felt the service worked well with other professionals.