We found the following areas of good practice;

• The environment was visibly clean and all areas were well maintained. We saw electrical equipment had been safety tested and was up-to-date.
• There were enough staff and records showed all of the staff had completed their mandatory training.
• There were a range of evidence-based interventions used for assessing and working with young people on the autistic spectrum, and their families.

• The National Autistic Society had selected the service to participate in a research study starting January 2017.

• There were no waiting lists for the service. Most of the young people referred were seen between four and 13 weeks after referral for their first appointment.

• There was good staff morale and sickness rate at the time of the inspection was low.

• All of the staff had been trained in and had a good understanding of safeguarding children.

However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve;

• There were no cleaning schedules for toys.
• The scales and blood pressure machine was not calibrated.
• There was no access to leaflets in languages other than English.

We carried out this inspection as part of our schedule of inspections to check on the care and welfare of people using this service. The visit was announced to ensure we could meet with the registered provider and inspect the building from which the service was based.

We spoke with the provider, two clinicians, a school nurse, a director of a care service and four parents of people using the service.

As part of the inspection we discussed consent with the provider and we established the ways in which consent was gained. The provider told us they ensured informed consent was gained formally and informally as part of their service.

We looked at care and welfare of people using the service and how this was documented.

We looked at safeguarding and the provider informed us of how people were protected from abuse, how the staff were trained in signs of abuse and how they deal with it appropriately.

We saw that the provider collected comments from people that used the service. This meant that the provider monitored the quality of the service that people received and we saw evidence that should people not be fully satisfied the provider took action to address this.

Some of the feedback comments included:

‘Very friendly. I felt like I wasn’t wasting anyone’s time’.

‘Staff very supportive, took my concerns seriously and offered advice on how to solve issues. Telephone sessions were very beneficial to speak about specific issues’.