Hastings Community Support Service rated Outstanding by the Care Quality Commission

Hastings Community Support Service in Dalmeny Road, East Sussex has been rated Outstanding by the Care Quality Commission following an inspection in February.

Inspectors rated the service Outstanding for being responsive to people’s needs and well-led and Good for being safe, effective and caring. The overall rating was Outstanding.

Hastings Community Support Service is a domiciliary care service which provides personal care to people living in their own homes. People using the service include adults who have a learning disability or an autistic spectrum disorder.  There were six people using the service at the time of the inspection.

Amanda Stride, Head of Inspection, Adult Social Care, said;

“Hastings Community Support Service is clearly committed to promoting it’s ethos of putting people at the very heart of its operations and ensuring there is a strong focus on encouraging people to become independent and live fulfilling lives.  The vision and values of the service which centre around providing care that improves the quality of people’s lives, is strongly embedded throughout the organisation.

“The service was rated Good overall after our previous inspection in October 2015 and I am delighted that the provision of compassionate, high quality, individualised care has continued to improve. The staff and management should be proud of their achievement in attaining our highest overall rating of Outstanding and I would like to extend my congratulations to them”.

Some of the key findings from the inspection included:

• Inspectors found the service outstanding in the way it responded to people’s changing needs and put people first at all times. There was a strong focus

on encouraging people to become independent and supporting people to live as able a life as possible by trying out new hobbies, activities, interests and form community links. People and staff felt a sense of well-being when this was achieved.

• People’s care and support was well planned, with comprehensive plans in place to guide staff. Care was personalised and individual to meet people’s differing needs.

• Staff showed passion and commitment to providing the best support to enable people to have full lives and people were overwhelmingly positive about the way they were treated with kindness, dignity and respect while receiving care and support from the staff.

• Staff were encouraged to develop innovative ideas to measure and show success and the management recognised and celebrated staff good practice by publicising these in prominent areas throughout the service. This also contributed to the emphasis on continuous improvements which again proved beneficial to the people using the service.

The full inspection report can be found at: http://www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-2116809451