Magic House

Updated 13 September 2024

Date of Assessment: 7 to 10 October 2024. This assessment was prompted by information we held about the service, including existing and emerging concerns. The assessment covered the entirety of the safe and well-led key questions, and parts of the effective, caring and responsive key questions. The service is a supported living service providing care and support to people with varied physical and mental health needs, including people with a learning disability and autistic people. The service consisted of several supported living schemes in and outside of London. We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted.

Safety was not always adequately managed. We found concerns in relation to assessing risks to people, ensuring people were protected from abuse or neglect, management of medicines, monitoring and reducing incidents, and staff training. In some cases, the way the service assessed people’s needs was not always efficient which could potentially impact the care provided to people. There were gaps in how the service managed complaints. We found inconsistencies and shortfalls in the governance of the service, including the effectiveness of quality assurance systems. Where improvements had been made, these were not always maintained across the different parts of the service. These concerns resulted in 3 breaches of regulations in relation to safe care and treatment, safeguarding and staffing, and 1 repeated breach of regulation regarding good governance. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment. In instances where CQC have decided to take civil or criminal enforcement action against the provider, we will publish this information on our website after any representations and/or appeals have been concluded. However, we also found a number of examples of good care and good practice. For example, people received person-centred care and staff responded positively to their individual needs. There was an open culture where people and staff felt comfortable to raise concerns. There were also good support systems for staff.

Updated 13 September 2024

People’s experiences of the care and support they received were mixed. We interacted with a number of people throughout our assessment and spoke to relatives for feedback on people’s care. While some people were happy with the service, felt safe and settled, and had their needs met effectively, others were not fully satisfied and experienced less favourable outcomes. Where people expressed a general satisfaction with the care they received, our assessment found some elements of their care did not meet the expected standards. For example, while people had the opportunity to communicate their feelings and opinions, and felt their move to the service was smooth, the service did not always ensure they were supported appropriately to overcome some of the challenges they faced in their daily lives. For some people, staff supported them safely with positive risk taking so that they can do things they enjoyed but this was not the case across the entire service as we found cases where some people were exposed risk of harm due to poor safety management measures. Similarly, not every person felt safe while using the service. This was partly due to people not always receiving care and support from staff who knew them well and staff who were not fully trained in certain specific areas. People were exposed to a considerable level of inconsistency in terms of their experience of care, which varied across the different supported living schemes and from person to person due to their personal needs. Nonetheless, people lived independent lives as much as possible, engaged in activities of their liking and received appropriate support from staff when they became anxious or distressed. Overall, people expressed they were in control of their care and participated in care planning.