Adult care service praised by industry regulator

Adult care service praised by industry regulator

A council service which supports people with learning disabilities and mental health problems has been praised by the industry regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The Rochdale Vulnerable Adults and Young People’s Community Support Services received the report following an inspection in September.

The service provides 24/7 personal care support to people with learning disabilities who live in their own home and also the opportunity for people with a learning disability or mental health problem to live in a family home on a long or short term basis.

The report stated that the service was meeting the standards in all areas, including monitoring the quality of service provision, managing medicines well and ensuring that staff were properly trained and supported to do their job.

The inspectors spoke to one staff member during the inspection who said: “The training and support has been brilliant and clients are just a real pleasure to work with. They are supported to live life to the full. The whole service is about them.”

The team also performed well on the care and welfare of the people who use the service, with one person they spoke to saying: “The lady I live with listens to me and we talk about the things that worry me as I worry all the time. She’s very good at listening and she has lots of training, if she didn’t have training she wouldn’t be able to care for me and I can’t do everything myself.”

Staff were also deemed to be good at ensuring that the people using the service were involved as far as they could be in making decisions about their care.

The service is one of a number within adult social care which will form part of a new social enterprise organisation from next April. The new enterprise is being set up with the  support of staff, and will  mean that as well as the current services continuing,  new ones will be developed. Staff and service users will have a strong voice in the new enterprise, being represented on company’s board, and it is expected to cut around £1m a year from the cost of delivering adult care in the borough.

Councillor Jean Hornby, Cabinet Member for Adult Care at Rochdale Borough Council, said: “It’s great that the hard work of our staff has been recognised in this way. I’m really proud of their achievement and believe their enthusiasm puts them in the best possible position to take advantage of the many opportunities that being part of a social enterprise will bring, including increased flexibility about how they deliver services to the most vulnerable people in our borough.”