Archived: Lifeline Stockton Alcohol Service

We do not currently rate substance misuse services.

We found the following areas of good practice :

• there were enough staff to meet the needs of clients
• staff had the necessary skills and had access to appropriate training
• procedures for safeguarding clients from abuse were robust and staff demonstrated a clear understanding of them
• staff reported incidents or harm or risk of harm and recorded them appropriately and the service had a good system to review and learn from incidents
• staff carried out comprehensive assessments of clients’ needs in a timely manner
• staff followed appropriate best practice guidelines
• the service worked effectively with a range of other organisations to provide an holistic approach to meet the needs of clients
• clients had opportunities to feed back about their care and be involved in decisions about the service.

However, we also found areas that the provider could improve:

• the fire doors in the first floor kitchen did not meet British standard requirements
• safeguarding alerts were not being recorded on the incident reporting system, in line with the provider’s policy
• ongoing assessment of risk to clients was not fully documented in recovery plans, some of which were not comprehensive and did not show evidence of the involvement of clients
• recovery capital was not being discussed with people who used the service to inform treatment planning
• clinical audits were not being undertaken
• staff had not received formal training on the Mental Capacity Act.