Poole and Bournemouth Shared Lives

Poole and Bournemouth Shared Lives recruits people to become paid carers to support people aged 16 and over with a range of support needs. People stay in the carer's home and receive their support within a family environment. Some shared lives carers had been approved to care for more than one person. Shared Lives support can vary from a day a week, a day a month, overnight stays or living with someone for a short while or permanently. Staff employed by the shared lives service provide support to people and their carers.

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.

At the time of the inspection the service was supporting 60 people on a long term or short term basis.

People's experience of using this service and what we found

There were systems and processes in place to identify and manage risks to people's care. Organisational governance processes monitored the quality of the service.

There were comprehensive recruitment processes in place to ensure people were matched with suitable shared lives carers to support people effectively in their own homes.

Shared lives carers completed a range of training to help them support people appropriately. Shared lives carers had received safeguarding training and were able to demonstrate their understanding and responsibilities to reduce the risk of harm to people.

People received their medicines from shared lives carers who had been trained to safely administer medicines.

Shared lives carers had received training on infection prevention and control. Information and guidance on infection control measures were available for shared lives carers and people.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with autism and or a learning disability the choices, dignity, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right Support, right care, right culture is the statutory guidance which supports CQC to make assessments and judgements about services providing support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people.

The service was able to demonstrate how they were meeting the underpinning principles of Right support, right care, right culture. The values and behaviours of the registered manager and staff led to shared lives carers feeling supported. Communication was “very good.”

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

This service was registered with us on 06/06/2019 and this is the first inspection.

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our reinspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.