This comprehensive inspection of Supporting Independence Team took place on 15 and 26 February 2018 and was announced. The service had changed late in 2016 under a Hull City Council re-organisation, changed its name and its location and received a new registration in February 2017. Therefore this is the service’s first rated inspection. We found the overall rating for this service to be ‘Good’. The rating is based on an aggregation of the ratings awarded for all 5 key questions.

The Supporting Independence Team is a Hull City Council care at home service providing active recovery support to people in their own homes. It aims to be helpful, supportive, relevant and accessible to enable people to live as part of their community, by meeting their needs and supporting their rights and entitlements. It achieves this by working with people, with the view of setting and meeting of person-specific goals and to support individuals to re-gain their independence where possible. Where people are assessed as requiring long-term care, packages of support are sourced for them with private care at home providers. The service is provided to adults aged 18 and above, older people, people who have had a mild to moderate stroke, people who needed end of life care, people with mental health problems (in partnership with the NHS), people with physical disabilities, those with a mild learning disability and those who care for any of these groups of people. The service also provides emergency support and out of hours night time support.

Following on from the intervention by the active recovery assessment team, who work with the people to devise the initial support plan during the assessment process, The Supporting Independence Team deliver the active recovery support and monitor and review people’s progress throughout this process. Thornton Court, where the care at home office is located, is a housing community facility where the people sign a temporary stay agreement during their Active Recovery rehabilitation before returning home, if they require adaptive premises to aid their recovery.

Not everyone using Supporting Independence Team receives regulated activity; Care Quality Commission (CQC) only inspects the service being received by people provided with 'personal care'; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided.

The provider was required to have a registered manager in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the 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. The registered manager had been in post for the last year with the service and for another two and a half years prior the re-organisation.

People were protected from the risk of harm and staff were trained in and knowledgeable about safeguarding people from abuse. Risk was safely managed. Recruitment of staff followed safe practices to ensure staff were ‘suitable’ to care for and support vulnerable people. Staffing numbers were sufficient to meet people’s needs. The management of medicines was safe and systems in place demonstrated there was a safe audit trail for handling all medicines. Staff followed good hygiene for safe control of infection.

Systems in place acknowledged and recorded when things went wrong and lessons were learnt to ensure problems or mistakes were not repeated. Staff enabled people to make choices and decisions wherever possible in order to regain control over their lives. People were cared for and supported by qualified and competent staff who were themselves regularly supervised and received annual appraisals of their personal performance. Staff respected the diversity of people and met their individual needs. Nutrition and hydr