About the service Lucerne House a residential care home providing accommodation and personal care for 10 people with learning disabilities and autism. There were 10 people living at the home when we inspected. Some people have specialist needs associated with dementia, autism, mental health and epilepsy.
In addition to Lucerne House, the provider also runs a separate supported living service for 42 people living with learning disabilities and or mental health who lived in their own homes. Only one person received support with personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it.
Right Support:
Although a large service, the model of care took people’s individual needs and risks into account. Communal areas were used to ensure people had space and some people enjoyed spending time in their rooms. There were plans to refurbish the garden office to create additional space for people to spend their time. Processes to assess and monitor risks were consistently implemented across the different areas of the home and supported living service.
People told us they felt safe living at Lucerne House we observed people in both settings were relaxed in the company of staff. Safeguarding concerns had been responded to promptly.
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:
People’s received their medicines safely and where appropriate, people were supported to manage, or part manage their own medicines.
There were enough staff to meet people’s needs and wishes. Some people went to day centres and others were supported to participate in activities of their choice. People told us they enjoyed what they did and had regular opportunities to attend church, some went swimming and some enjoyed theatre, shopping and restaurants.
A health professional told us, “I feel the clients are safe and staff are very confident when supporting clients. The home is well managed, and the manager and deputy will always seek advice at any time when needed. The staff are very caring and yes, they understand the clients’ needs.”
Right Culture:
There were effective systems to monitor the quality of the service. Audits were comprehensive and were effective in identifying any shortfalls which were then promptly addressed. The home had identified some improvements needed in relation to developing some areas of record keeping and work was underway to address this.
There was a positive staff culture and ethos in the way people were supported which led to people developing independence and doing things they enjoyed. Local links had been established which further enhanced people’s lives within the area the lived. People’s relatives felt that there was good communication and they were kept informed and equally could contact the service if they had any concerns.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection
The last rating for this service was good (published 16 March 2021).
Why we inspected
This inspection was prompted by a review of the information we held about this service.
We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the Safe key question. We look at this in all care home inspections even if no concerns or risks have been identified. This is to provide assurance that the service can respond to COVID-19 and other infection outbreaks effectively.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service remains good.
Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.