28 November 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
New Hope Care Ltd is a domiciliary and ‘supported living’ service that provides personal care and support to people living in their own homes. The provider is registered to support people with a variety of needs including people who live with dementia, people who misuse drugs and alcohol, people with an eating disorder, people with mental health needs and people with a learning disability, and autistic people. At the time of the inspection the provider was supporting 5 people with learning disabilities/ autistic people.
Some people were supported by staff who lived in people’s homes and provided 24 hour support to people.
Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also consider any wider social care provided.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
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:
Risks to people were not always assessed and records required more detail with actions for staff to follow. Improvements were required with the management of medicines to ensure records were accurate and staff had guidance for when to administer ‘as required’ and covert medicines.
People were supported to have choice and control over their own daily lives. The policies and systems in the service supported this practice. However the provider did not fully understand their duties under right support, right care, and right culture in relation to supported living and service models to protect people’s choice and rights in relation to their tenancy and choice of provider.
People were supported by a consistent staff team who knew them well and understood their needs.
Right Care:
Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it. Staff promoted equality and diversity. They understood people's cultural needs and provided culturally appropriate care. Staff protected and respected people's privacy and dignity.
Right Culture:
Improvements were needed to the current systems to make them more effective to monitor the quality of the service and to drive improvements. Audits were not always effective in identifying shortfalls in care practices.
People and those important to them, were involved in planning their care. The care manager and operations manager were open and transparent throughout our inspection and demonstrated a commitment to delivering improvements and achieving best outcomes for people. They were receptive to our feedback and took action to address the shortfalls we found.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection and update.
The last rating for the service was requires improvement (published 23 February 2017).
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.
We undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only. For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating.
The overall rating for the service has remained requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection. We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the safe and well led key question sections of this full report.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for New Hope Care Ltd on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement
We have identified breaches in relation to the management of risk and how the provider monitors the service provided.
Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.
Follow up
We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.