We inspected Creative Support - South Manchester Women’s Project (The Women’s Project) on 19 and 20 September 2017 and this inspection was announced. We gave the provider 24 hours’ notice because the location provided supported living services and we needed to be sure that someone would be in to assist us with our inspection.

South Manchester Women’s Project provides care and support to women with enduring mental health needs. The service is provided across two properties in South Manchester, Amherst Road and Longley Lane. Both premises are close to local amenities and public transport. At the time of this inspection, the service was supporting 14 people in total. Only six people were receiving support in relation to the regulated activity of personal care.

This was the first inspection of this service since it was registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in May 2016. There was a manager in post who had been registered with CQC since May 2016. A registered manager is a person who has registered with CQC to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

People told us they felt safe and comfortable in their homes. Recruitment processes in place helped to ensure staff of suitable character were employed. This meant people were protected from the risk of harm in this regard. We have made a recommendation that the service consider an alternative location for personal emergency evacuation plans to help ensure the relevant personnel are able to readily access them in the event of an emergency.

People’s support plans contained relevant and detailed risk assessments which guided staff to support them in a safe way.

Staff had a good knowledge of what safeguarding meant and could describe the types of abuse. They also knew what action to take if they suspected abuse was taking place. This meant staff knew how to respond to potential risks which could affect people’s safety and wellbeing.

There were suitable systems in place to record incidents and accidents. These were actioned in a timely manner and lessons learnt shared within the service. This meant people’s safety was considered and improvements made to help prevent future recurrence.

People told us there was sufficient staff to help them with care needs and leisure activities where needed. During our inspection we saw that staffing levels were adequate to the support needs of people. This meant that people were not put at risk due to inadequate staffing levels.

People were supported to take their medicines safely. Support plans contained detailed and person-centred information about people’s medicines and in some cases information about how the service supported people to administer their own medicines.

There were appropriate health and safety checks in place to ensure a safe environment for the people living there and the staff supporting them. These checks included gas, electrical systems and fire safety equipment.

People told us the staff at the Women’s Project supported them effectively. Staff were able to do this because they received an ample induction and mandatory training to ensure they were competent to carry out their roles. Training areas included food hygiene, safeguarding, manual handling, mental health and diabetes. We saw from training records that additional training in specialist areas such as hoarding disorder could be accessed depending on the need. Hoarding disorder is a pattern of behaviour that is characterized by excessive collection and an inability or unwillingness to discard large quantities of objects that cover the living areas of the home and cause significant distress or impairment. In addition to classroom and e-learning training, the registered manager cascaded any learning they received through training they attended. In addi