The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has raised the rating for Norwood – 60 Carlton Avenue from good to outstanding following an inspection in August and September.
Norwood - 60 Carlton Avenue is a residential care home offering personal care to up to eight autistic people or people with a learning disability. The home is run by Norwood, a charity providing services for people with a learning disability.
Following this inspection, as well as the overall rating improving from good to outstanding, so did the ratings for how responsive and well-led it is. It was again rated good for being safe, effective, and caring.
Rebecca Bauers, CQC’s director for people with a learning disability and autistic people, said:
“When we inspected 60 Carlton Avenue, we were pleased to find an extremely person-centred service focused on people’s individual needs and strengths, where staff had strong, positive relationships with the people they cared for.
“Many people’s loved ones said the home is like a family, and people living there told us staff were kind and caring. The home had a strong focus on promoting people’s independence and staff were enthusiastic about people achieving their goals.
“We saw some outstanding work to support people to communicate their needs, preferences and goals. The service was exploring multiple digital communication tools, such as an app supporting people who don’t communicate verbally, and staff made sure people understood and could make informed choices about their care.
“Staff understood people’s needs extremely well as a result, and made daily adjustments to the support they provided to make sure they were met.
“This was supported by a skilled leadership team, who led by example to promote an open and person-centred culture.
“We’ve shared our findings with the provider so they can continue building on the good practice we saw during this inspection. Other service providers should look at our report for 60 Carlton Avenue to see if there’s anything they can learn, and to promote improvements across the sector to support people to lead their best lives.”
Inspectors also found:
- Staff supported people to form healthy relationships in and outside the home. This included developing a pictorial guide together with people detailing what healthy, safe and consensual relationships look like
- People were offered a wide variety of social and educational activities, such as college, discos, and day trips
- Staff supported people to be an integral and valued part of the local community.
- When people became distressed, staff explored their reasons with them to help them feel more comfortable in future
- When things went wrong, staff documented incidents well and the service learned from them to improve people’s care in future
- The service supported people and their loved ones to raise any concerns, including through a pictorial complaints process.