- Independent mental health service
Head Office
Report from 2 January 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Specialist community mental health services for children and young people
Our view of the service
We carried out an unannounced assessment of Positive Care Solutions over 3 days starting on 5 November 2024. During our assessment we visited the head office for the organisation, then spent the 2 following days visiting the homes of service users. We gathered information from service users using the service, staff and managers, other stakeholders, and looked at a range of documents including care records, policies and procedures. Staff were caring and supportive, responded to patients needs and made sure they were involved in the planning and delivery of their care. There were sufficient staff, and they had received suitable inductions and training to enable them to carry out their roles. Risks were managed effectively; care plans were clear, and medicines were managed safely. Staff felt supported by their managers and felt they could raise concerns. However, we found one breach of regulation relating to governance. We found that governance processes were not always effective in monitoring and oversight of the service. This was because, team meeting minutes varied in their content and format. For example, the operations meeting minutes we were provided with lacked a clear agenda and actions/outcomes. In addition, although there were a number of audit processes in place, these had not always been effective in recognising shortfalls or errors. Audits concentrated more on checking if a task was completed than checking the quality of the work. Lastly, incident logs provided on the day of our assessment were basic and did not show evidence of review or learning from incidents.
People's experience of this service
We visited 6 service users at their homes and spoke to them about the care and treatment they received. We spoke to 5 of the service users individually and one patient declined to speak to us, but still allowed us to visit and speak to the staff caring for them and review their records. We received positive feedback from all the service users we spoke to, they told us that staff were kind, caring and responsive to their needs. They told us that the care they were receiving was supporting them to recover and make progress. All service users told us that they felt safe. We observed warm and friendly interactions between staff and service users and observed a strong bond in the teams.