Birnbeck House - Care Home Learning Disabilities

Date of assessment 23 July to 1 August 2025. Birnbeck House – Care Home Learning Disabilities is a residential care home providing care to people with a learning disability and autistic people which can accommodate up to 13 people. At the time of our inspection, 10 people were living at the home. This was a responsive assessment to review 6 breaches of regulation identified in our previous assessment in June 2024. We assessed 4 quality statements in safe, 1 in responsive and 1 in well led. At our last assessment we rated this service as requires improvement. At this assessment the rating has remained as requires improvement. We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. The provider was previously in breach of the legal regulations in relation to safe care and treatment, person centred care, dignity and respect, safeguarding, staffing and governance. Improvements were found at this assessment in relation to safeguarding and dignity and respect. Improvements were not found at this assessment in relation to safe care and treatment, person centred care, staffing and governance. The provider remained in breach of these legal regulations. People were at increased risk as the provider had not assessed or effectively managed all risks to people. People were supported with their health care needs but were not always supported to take part in activities they enjoyed or make choices about how they spent their time. Some staff were not trained in supporting autistic people and people with a learning disability at a level appropriate to their role. The service did not have governance systems effective in providing oversight of the daily care and support being delivered to people and identifying areas for improvement. In instances where CQC have decided to take civil or criminal enforcement action against a provider, we will publish this information on our website after any representations and/ or appeals have been concluded. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.

Date of assessment 13 June to 26 June 2024. We visited the service and spoke to people and staff on 13 June 2024. We reviewed records offsite and spoke with people, relatives and advocates between 13 June and 26 June 2024. Birnbeck House – Care Home manages a supported living service which provides personal care for up to 12 people with a learning disability, some of whom were also autistic. The Care Quality Commission (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. Not everyone who used the service received personal care. At the time of the inspection the service was supporting 5 people with personal care. The service did not have a registered manager, but an interim manager was based at the service and was supported by a senior management team. 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. This was a responsive assessment due to concerns raised to us about the service. This is the first assessment of the service. The assessment did not cover all parts of our Single Assessment Framework. We reviewed quality statements in Safe, Effective and Well-led key questions. We will carry out future assessments to cover other parts of the Framework and will update our website with our findings. We found 4 breaches of the legal regulations in relation to safe care and treatment, good governance, staffing and need for consent. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at the assessment.

Date of assessment 5 June to 26 June 2024. We visited the service on 5, 11 and 18 June 2024. We reviewed records offsite and spoke with staff, managers, people, relatives, friends and advocates between 5 June 2024 to 26 June 2024. Birnbeck House – Care Home Learning Disabilities is a is a residential care home providing care to people with a learning disability and autistic people which can accommodate up to 13 people. At the time of our inspection 11 people were living at the home. We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us. 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. This was a responsive assessment due to concerns raised to us about the service. We did not assess all quality statements at this assessment. We reviewed 6 quality statements in Safe, Effective and Well-led key questions. For those areas we did not assess, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. We found 6 breaches of the legal regulations in relation to safeguarding, safe care and treatment, governance, staffing, person centred care and dignity and respect. You can find more detail about our findings in the report below. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at the assessment.

Targeted IPC inspection during a cleared COVID-19 outbreak found the provider had effective infection prevention and control measures in place. The service was inspected but not rated, with assurance given across all eight IPC areas reviewed.