8 February 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
About the service
Hillside is a care home providing personal care and accommodation for 6 people. The home is a house with a garden and access to the local town. Most people who were living at Hillside had physical and learning disabilities, including autistic people. The home can support up to 7 people.
People's experience of using this service and what we found
This was a targeted inspection that focused on the safe use of medicines, risks to people being managed safely, infection control, person centred care and the management of the service. Based on this targeted inspection:
Right Support:
People received safe care at the home and the manager had updated risk assessments and care plans to guide staff how to support people safely. Medicines were administered to people safely, for the most part and immediate action was taken where this was not the case. Staff had a good understanding of people as individuals and external professionals were contacted to support people if this was needed. 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.
Right Care:
The service looked clean and well looked after and work had started to decorate the service. Staff were confident when supporting people and spoke with them with kindness and compassion. The manager and staff team had started to support people to set goals and achieve their ambitions. Work had also started to collect feedback from people in meaningful ways that made sense to them.
Right Culture:
There was a positive culture at the service. Staff enjoyed their job roles and people were happy and relaxed being supported by staff. The provider and manager had taken the findings from our last inspection seriously and put numerous measures in place to improve the quality of the support people had and the culture of the service. The provider and registered manager acknowledged that improvements could still be made and had plans in place to implement these.
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 this service was inadequate (report published 18 November 2022). The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve.
Why we inspected
We undertook this targeted inspection to check whether the Warning Notice we previously served in relation to Regulations 12, 9 and 17 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 had been met. We had concerns about risk assessment and management, medicines management, infection control. people receiving person-centered care and how the management team were monitoring the quality of the service. The overall rating for the service has not changed following this targeted inspection and remains inadequate.
We use targeted inspections to follow up on Warning Notices or to check concerns. They do not look at an entire key question, only the part of the key question we are specifically concerned about. Targeted inspections do not change the rating from the previous inspection. This is because they do not assess all areas of a key question.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.
The overall rating for this service is ‘Inadequate’ and the service remains in ‘special measures’. This means we will keep the service under review and, if we do not propose to cancel the provider’s registration, we will re-inspect within 6 months to check for significant improvements.
If the provider has not made enough improvement within this timeframe and there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall rating, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures. This will mean we will begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will usually lead to cancellation of their registration or to varying the conditions the registration.
For adult social care services, the maximum time for being in special measures will usually be no more than 12 months. If the service has demonstrated improvements when we inspect it and it is no longer rated as inadequate for any of the five key questions it will no longer be in special measures.