Community Wessex - East, a supported living service for five people with autism, learning disabilities and mental health needs, was rated Good across all five key questions at its first inspection in April 2023. The service demonstrated strong person-centred care, effective safeguarding, robust governance and a positive, inclusive culture under responsive and visible leadership.
Strengths
· Staff had strong knowledge of safeguarding procedures and people felt consistently safe, with relatives confirming 'They look after [person] very well. Everything is in place to keep them safe.'
· Proactive risk management with person-centred positive behaviour support plans created collaboratively with individuals, families and external professionals.
· Medicines were managed safely with competency sign-off, PRN protocols, regular audits, and a robust lesson-learning process following a medicines error.
· Staff completed role-specific training including Autism Acceptance, Signalong and Epilepsy Awareness, and benefited from a strong 12-week induction aligned to the Care Certificate.
· People were supported to communicate in their preferred method (PECS, Signalong, body language) and staff demonstrated excellent understanding of individual communication needs.