We carried out this inspection because we had not visited the service for some time and we did not have enough information to assess compliance. We wanted to see what life was like for the people who lived in the home. At the time of our visit there were eight people resident at Florence Villa.We visited the service and spoke to people using the service and staff. We looked at records of care, staff rota's and training and medication management. We observed how staff and users of the service interacted and talked to people about the things they did and what they liked about the service. People using the service are known as learners, we have referred to them as such throughout our report.
During our visit we were accompanied by an expert by experience and their mentor. An expert by experience is some one who uses services, or has had experience of services. They are people of all ages, with different experiences and from diverse cultural backgrounds. They help us improve the way we inspect and write our reports. Our expert by experience talked to learners individually, looked at what happened around the home and saw how everyone was getting on together and what the home felt like. They took some notes and wrote a report about what they found and details are included in this report.
Before we visited the service we spoke to other agencies that had an interest in the service such as fire safety officers, environmental health, local authority social workers and quality monitoring officers and LINks. LINks are groups of individual members of the public and local voluntary and community groups who work together to improve health and social care services. To do this they gather the views of local people. No concerns were identified by any of these agencies.
During our visit we spoke to learners and staff and observed interactions between them. We saw that learners using the service were confident in their surroundings and were able to access all areas of the home freely, subject to risk assessment.
Following our visit we spoke to a relative who commented, "It was the best decision for my relative to move to the college. It was difficult at first but we've seen them blossom." "We are so thankful for the support our relative receives, we can see the difference the college has made and the improvements in his independence."