Archived: The Old School

Updated 29 January 2016

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This inspection took place on 8 January 2016 and was announced. The provider was given 48 hours’ notice because the location provides a respite service and we needed to be sure the registered manager would be available for us to talk with, and that records would be accessible. The inspection was undertaken by one inspector.

Prior to this inspection we reviewed all the information we held about the service, including data about safeguarding and statutory notifications. Statutory notifications are information about important events which the provider is required to send us by law. We spoke with the local authority and health and social care professionals to gain their feedback as to the care that people received.

We spoke with the registered manager and one member of staff. We looked at six staff records to see if they were accurate and reflected the training that had been undertaken.

Updated 29 January 2016

During our inspection in August 2015, we found that mandatory training was not always up to date for staff working at the service. There was little in the way of specialist training specific to the needs of people using the service. This was in breach of Regulation 18 of the Health and Social Care Act 2010 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

Following the inspection the provider sent us an action plan detailing the improvements they were going to make, and stating that improvements would be achieved by the end of September 2015.

This report only covers our findings in relation to the outstanding breach of regulation. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for ‘The Old School’ on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

The Old School provides respite care for up to four people with a learning disability. There were four people using the service during our inspection.

The inspection was announced and took place on 8 January 2016.

The service had a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

During this inspection, we found that improvements had been made in respect of the systems to overview staff training. Staff had received core training and records had been updated to show when training was next due.

While improvements had been made we have not revised the rating for this key question; to improve the rating to ‘Good’ would require a longer term track record of consistent good practice. We will review our rating for effective at the next comprehensive inspection.