Tenancy Support Service Coatbridge Housing Support Service 195 Main Street Coatbridge ML5 3BW Telephone: 01236 812533

Inspected by: Alan Paterson Type of inspection: Unannounced Inspection completed on: 6 February 2013 Inspection report continued

Contents

Page No Summary 3 1 About the service we inspected 5 2 How we inspected this service 6 3 The inspection 8 4 Other information 17 5 Summary of grades 18 6 Inspection and grading history 18

Service provided by: North Lanarkshire Council

Service provider number: SP2003000237

Care service number: CS2004069012

Contact details for the inspector who inspected this service: Alan Paterson Telephone 01698 897800 Email [email protected]

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Summary

This report and grades represent our assessment of the quality of the areas of performance which were examined during this inspection.

Grades for this care service may change after this inspection following other regulatory activity. For example, if we have to take enforcement action to make the service improve, or if we investigate and agree with a complaint someone makes about the service.

We gave the service these grades Quality of Care and Support 4 Good Quality of Staffing 4 Good Quality of Management and Leadership 4 Good

What the service does well Tenancy Support Coatbridge provides an individualised support service to meet the identified need(s) of people who are homeless or who are facing homelessness.with no limitation to the period of that involvement. The service utilises an effective crisis intervention model which ensures that the people seeking to use the service have their immediate and pressing needs met quickly and efficiently. In the geographical area of Coatbridge there is a homeless unit designated for women and children which has been upgraded to offer single person or family occupancy. This support service is also accessed by other North Lanarkshire Tenancy Support locality staff.

The service provides a focused service and makes good use of its network of service supports to ensure that needs which need specialised responses are referred to the appropriate specialised services

What the service could do better The service user personal plans were difficult to audit being partly held in paper format and in the service's computer system. The service needs to evaluate its record keeping and settle on a method which meets the service's needs, are more easily audited and met the need for service user access. We also noted that service could benefit from examining the balance between being a housing service and being a social care service.

Tenancy Support Service Coatbridge, page 3 of 19 Inspection report continued What the service has done since the last inspection The service has developed its quality management system and the use of its "sustainability workers" to develop additional value to the service including benefit maximisation, self evaluation and efficiency in its use of resources.

Conclusion The service provides a effective and evaluative support to people in crisis.

Who did this inspection Alan Paterson

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1 About the service we inspected

Tenancy Support Service Coatbridge is provided by North Lanarkshire Council. The service was registered by the Care Inspectorate in April 2011.

Before 1 April 2011 this service was registered with the Care Commission. On this date the new scrutiny body Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland took over the work of the Care Commission, including the registration of care services. This means that North Lanarkshire Council continued its registration under the new body, SCSWIS.

The aim of the service is to provide housing support to people who are homeless or who are at risk of homelessness by focusing on their housing support needs and tenancy sustainment.

The service is provided to Service Users of the Coatbridge Locality area of North Lanarkshire living in the Council's temporary accommodation and across all tenures.

Based on the findings of this inspection this service has been awarded the following grades:

Quality of Care and Support - Grade 4 - Good Quality of Staffing - Grade 4 - Good Quality of Management and Leadership - Grade 4 - Good

This report and grades represent our assessment of the quality of the areas of performance which were examined during this inspection.

Grades for this care service may change following other regulatory activity. You can find the most up-to-date grades for this service by visiting our website www.careinspectorate.com or by calling us on 0845 600 9527 or visiting one of our offices.

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2 How we inspected this service

The level of inspection we carried out In this service we carried out a low intensity inspection. We carry out these inspections when we are satisfied that services are working hard to provide consistently high standards of care.

What we did during the inspection In the course of the inspection we examined service documentation, held discussions with staff, observed staff undertaking their roles, discussed service with service users, examined questionnaire results.

Grading the service against quality themes and statements We inspect and grade elements of care that we call 'quality themes'. For example, one of the quality themes we might look at is 'Quality of care and support'. Under each quality theme are 'quality statements' which describe what a service should be doing well for that theme. We grade how the service performs against the quality themes and statements.

Details of what we found are in Section 3: The inspection

Inspection Focus Areas (IFAs) In any year we may decide on specific aspects of care to focus on during our inspections. These are extra checks we make on top of all the normal ones we make during inspection. We do this to gather information about the quality of these aspects of care on a national basis. Where we have examined an inspection focus area we will clearly identify it under the relevant quality statement.

Fire safety issues We do not regulate fire safety. Local fire and rescue services are responsible for checking services. However, where significant fire safety issues become apparent, we will alert the relevant fire and rescue services so they may consider what action to take. You can find out more about care services' responsibilities for fire safety at www.firelawscotland.org

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The annual return Every year all care services must complete an 'annual return' form to make sure the information we hold is up to date. We also use annual returns to decide how we will inspect the service. Annual Return Received: Yes - Electronic

Comments on Self Assessment Every year all care services must complete a 'self assessment' form telling us how their service is performing. We check to make sure this assessment is accurate. The service completed a satsfactory self assessment.

Taking the views of people using the care service into account

Taking carers' views into account

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3 The inspection We looked at how the service performs against the following quality themes and statements. Here are the details of what we found.

Quality Theme 1: Quality of Care and Support Grade awarded for this theme: 4 - Good

Statement 1 We ensure that service users and carers participate in assessing and improving the quality of the care and support provided by the service. Service strengths We concluded that the service was good in this aspect of the service delivery. Tenancy Support Coatbridge is provided by North Lanarkshire Council under its Housing and Social Work Services(NLC). as such the service and the other tenancy support services share council wide policy and procedures regarding the participation of service users and other stakeholders in the provision of council services. NLC frequently canvas service users on the service its provides. Information on this is freely available and publicised in council buildings. The service includes participation for all of its users gathering information at entry to the service midway and exiting the service. This ensures that the service user has an opportunity to make their opinions n the service known at regular intervals in their contact with the service. This information is collated by the service and is used within the quality systems that the service operates within the individual services and when the managers of the services which make up the NLC provision meet to discuss quality matters. This year the service held the annual service users' event at the supported accommodation unit to allow service user from the Coatbridge Locality to network with other service users, staff and other agencies who attended to network to discuss and provide feedback on the service they receive. The events are very popular with service users and they unanimously recorded positive views of the service but it is more difficult to obtain considered suggestions for the development of the service. The service liaises with voluntary organisation to provide focused specialised support, for example for drugs and alcohol issues and sexual abuse issues. Service users are referred for support from these organisations.

S ervice users who require intensive support can be referred to one of the Council's

Tenancy Support Service Coatbridge, page 8 of 19 Inspection report continued external support providers and return to the Council's support service once work with the external provider is completed. Service users can receive support from these services instead of the service while they have needs which the specialist service can meet and return to the service once work with the organisation is completed. Sometimes, depending on assessment, the service users will receive this support in addition to the support from the service. This is a good strategy which allows the service to concentrate on developing its strengths in assessment and tenancy support.

The service management meet with the representatives of the other services on a regular basis to review ongoing work which allows the exchange of suggestions and ideas regarding joint working. The support workers work collaboratively with the service users. We accompanied support workers on visits to service users and observed that the workers aimed at supporting the service users to comment on the service. Areas for improvement We noted that there was no service user forum which involved service users on a consistent basis Service users were either asked at one off events or as individuals. It would improve participation if the service could involve a Representative of service users at more levels of service provision. (see recommendation 1) We found when examining service users personal plans that they appeared to be mostly incomplete and did not have much information in them. In particular they were lacking up to date detailed case notes. The Service Manager advised all information was in paper file and/or the computer system.(see recommendation 2).

Grade awarded for this statement: 4 - Good Number of requirements: 0 Number of recommendations: 2

Recommendations 1. The service should examine its consultation and participation activities with a view to establishing a more involved role for service users. National Care Standards (NCS) 8 Housing Support Services - Expressing Your Views 2. The service should examine its record keeping practices to ensure that they maintain comprehensive, detailed and accurate records. National Care Standards (NCS) 4 Housing Support Services - Housing Support Planning

Statement 3 We ensure that service users' health and wellbeing needs are met.

Tenancy Support Service Coatbridge, page 9 of 19 Inspection report continued Service strengths We concluded that the service was good in this aspect of the inspection.

The service is provided at a crisis point in the service users life and the service does this well. access to the service is through local "First Stop Shop" (council contact point for all services). This allows the potential service user to access the service where all other people go for housing or council advice. The service formerly operated from the same building as the one stop shop but now is based in another council building further along the Main St.

Service users are interviewed by support staff who gather information on the person's circumstances.The service makes use of a 'start matrix' which is an assessment/ risk assessment tool which allocates a numerical score to the service users situation. The higher the score the more pressing the crisis.

This system has limits i.e. multiple factors of the same type do not accumulate. These are recognised by the service and when identified are discussed at management meetings, but we noted the system is accurate enough to manage the early stages of the person's use of the service.

The assessment process identifies health and wellbeing needs which the service can support the service user to meet. The support worker can then make referrals to services indicated in the assessment including Social Work, Health services and specialist addiction services.

The service aims to provide assessment, referral to specialist agencies and non specialised housing support. If there are health and wellbeing needs identified the service makes referral to the appropriate resource.

The service has recently created a post of sustainability Worker' directed at improving the amount of successful outcomes for people using the service. The service has chosen to direct this post at income maximisation where as part of the service the sustainability worker will ensure that service users are on maximum income level. The sustainability worker also works with service users to assist them to understand the tenancy agreement and how to access council services.

Support staff are aware of and had training in adult and child protection issues. Areas for improvement As noted under section 1.1. we found the personal records available for inspection to be difficult to audit. The completion of the initial assessment recorded only simple information and the printed copy from the system added little information to that.

In particular:

Tenancy Support Service Coatbridge, page 10 of 19 Inspection report continued we found the running notes to have little detail and were confined to when a visit was made and that mainly the service user had no issues. In observing the support workers in practice we saw a lot of good, directed and supportive discussion with the service user which should have been recorded. we found little detail of what the service had provided to the service user except for referrals to different agencies we found few details of what other agencies had provided to the service user.

We were told by the service manager that there were other details which would be on the system or with individual support workers. This meant that the files were not accurate and did not contain accurate and up to date information on the service. We concluded that the service needed to decide how it would record its activities and provide a personal plan for the service users.

We also noted that records we inspected had been completed in ambiguous ways. For example in the section which recorded dependencies we found that the term prescription drugs had been written into the assessment. We could not find out whether the statement implied that the subject of the assessment had a prescription from the GP or was dependent on prescription drugs.

We noted that Housing information made up the bulk of the files available for inspection. We found this information to be mostly complete and had been signed by the service user. This indicates an imbalance between the attention given to the housing element of the service as opposed to the needs of the service user. (see recommendations 1 and 2 of section 1.1)

Grade awarded for this statement: 4 - Good Number of requirements: 0 Number of recommendations: 0

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Quality Theme 3: Quality of Staffing Grade awarded for this theme: 4 - Good

Statement 1 We ensure that service users and carers participate in assessing and improving the quality of staffing in the service. Service strengths We concluded that the service was good in this aspect of the service delivery. Tenancy Support Coatbridge is provided by North Lanarkshire Council under its Housing and Social Work Services(NLC). as such the service and the other tenancy support services share council wide policy and procedures regarding the participation of service users and other stakeholders in the provision of council services. NLC frequently canvas service users on the service its provides. Information on this is freely available and publicised in council buildings. The service includes participation for all of its users gathering information at entry to the service midway and exiting the service. This ensures that the service user has an opportunity to make their opinions n the service known at regular intervals in their contact with the service. This information is collated by the service and is used within the quality systems that the service operates within the individual services and when the managers of the services which make up the NLC provision meet to discuss quality matters. This year the service held the annual service users' event at the supported accommodation unit to allow service user from the Coatbridge Locality to network with other service users, staff and other agencies who attended to network to discuss and provide feedback on the service they receive. The events are very popular with service users and they unanimously recorded positive views of the service but it is more difficult to obtain considered suggestions for the development of the service. The service liaises with voluntary organisation to provide focused specialised support, for example for drugs and alcohol issues and sexual abuse issues. Service users are referred for support from these organisations.

S ervice users who require intensive support can be referred to one of the Council's external support providers and return to the Council's support service once work with the external provider is completed. Service users can receive support from these services instead of the service while they have needs which the specialist service can meet and return to the service once work with the organisation is completed. Sometimes, depending on assessment, the

Tenancy Support Service Coatbridge, page 12 of 19 Inspection report continued service users will receive this support in addition to the support from the service. This is a good strategy which allows the service to concentrate on developing its strengths in assessment and tenancy support.

Grade awarded for this statement: 4 - Good Number of requirements: 0 Number of recommendations: 0

Statement 3 We have a professional, trained and motivated workforce which operates to National Care Standards, legislation and best practice. Service strengths Recruitment to the service is managed by the provider's Human Resources department who manage recruitment and retention across the provider's services. NLC have a strict recruitment policy which follows best practice in ensuring safe recruitment and that staff have the opportunity to attain qualifications required for registration with the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC). This includes Vacancies advertised internally and externally Short leeting through objective matching to essential and desirable attributes, skills and Competitive interview References from previous employers sought Protection of Vulnerable group checks made before taking up post When in post workers undergo a induction period and have regular appraisal. In discussion with the service manager and staff we found that the NLC policy on personal supervision was being carried out. Staff have personal development records and access to employer supported training.

Staff spoken with were knowledgeable and had considerable experience in this area of work. Regular staff meetings took place. We noted that the provider was supporting service managers through Scottish Vocational Qualification (SVQ)level four in health and social care, senior support staff

Tenancy Support Service Coatbridge, page 13 of 19 Inspection report continued through SVQ level 3 and support workers through SVQ level 2. These qualifications meet the SSSC registration standards for this kind of service.

The Service Manager had completed SVQ 4 H&SC Dec 12 and the new senior worker was preparing to go on this training. Areas for improvement We spoke with staff and found them to have a wide range of experience of experience. However, although there were examples of substantial social care experience, we were concerned that this appeared to be, from the people we spoke with and the training records we examined to be balanced towards the housing aspect of the service. This was most pronounced in the senior and management levels with largely housing service backgrounds and SVQ training only commenced and no established network of mentoring in place.(see recommendation 1)

Grade awarded for this statement: 4 - Good Number of requirements: 0 Number of recommendations: 1

Recommendations 1. That the provider examine the arrangements for SVQ training for service staff to establish opportunities for social care experiences to be part of the candidates training. NCS 3 Housing Support Services - Management and Staffing Arrangements

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Quality Theme 4: Quality of Management and Leadership Grade awarded for this theme: 4 - Good

Statement 1 We ensure that service users and carers participate in assessing and improving the quality of the management and leadership of the service. Service strengths please see the statement made in section 1.1. in the context of management Areas for improvement please see above

Grade awarded for this statement: 4 - Good Number of requirements: 0 Number of recommendations: 0

Statement 4 We use quality assurance systems and processes which involve service users, carers, staff and stakeholders to assess the quality of service we provide Service strengths The provider NLC has published its policy and procedures regarding participation in quality enhance for its services. This is based on the participation of service users, local communities and staff contributing to the evaluation and improvement of services.NLC does this through questionnaires, public consultation and including continuous improvement activities in its service provision. These policies and procedures are regulated through the social work inspection agency. There is an established quality improvement group which monitors the service's work. It has representation from all of the similar services in the provider's organisation. The group meets regularly to discuss issues, analyse information and make changes to how the services work. The service gathers information from the service users at the beginning, middle and end of the person's time with the service. This allows the service user opportunity to evaluate their experiences.

Staff are encouraged to contribute to the development of the service through staff meetings and individual supervision.

Tenancy Support Service Coatbridge, page 15 of 19 Inspection report continued Areas for improvement We noted when examining minutes from quality meetings that they tended to discuss issues to do with the tenancy of the service user rather than the issues facing the service users. For example one exemplar Key Performance Indicator (KPI) was a property which was let three or more time over two years. We would have expected more KPIs which were service user orientated for example successful outcomes measured against presenting issues.

Grade awarded for this statement: 5 - Very Good Number of requirements: 0 Number of recommendations: 0

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4 Other information

Complaints No complaints have been upheld, or partially upheld, since the last inspection.

Enforcements We have taken no enforcement action against this care service since the last inspection.

Additional Information

Action Plan Failure to submit an appropriate action plan within the required timescale, including any agreed extension, where requirements and recommendations have been made, will result in SCSWIS re-grading the Quality Statement within the Management and Leadership Theme as unsatisfactory (1). This will result in the Quality Theme for Management and Leadership being re-graded as Unsatisfactory (1).

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5 Summary of grades

Quality of Care and Support - 4 - Good

Statement 1 4 - Good

Statement 3 4 - Good

Quality of Staffing - 4 - Good

Statement 1 4 - Good

Statement 3 4 - Good

Quality of Management and Leadership - 4 - Good

Statement 1 4 - Good

Statement 4 5 - Very Good

6 Inspection and grading history

Date Type Gradings

20 Mar 2012 Unannounced Care and support 4 - Good Staffing 4 - Good Management and Leadership Not Assessed

14 Oct 2010 Announced Care and support 4 - Good Staffing Not Assessed Management and Leadership 4 - Good

23 Mar 2010 Announced Care and support 4 - Good Staffing 3 - Adequate Management and Leadership 3 - Adequate

3 Mar 2009 Announced Care and support 4 - Good Staffing 4 - Good Management and Leadership 4 - Good

All inspections and grades before 1 April 2011 are those reported by the former regulator of care services, the Care Commission.

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To find out more about our inspections and inspection reports Read our leaflet 'How we inspect'. You can download it from our website or ask us to send you a copy by telephoning us on 0845 600 9527.

This inspection report is published by the Care Inspectorate. You can get more copies of this report and others by downloading it from our website: www.careinspectorate.com or by telephoning 0845 600 9527.

Translations and alternative formats This inspection report is available in other languages and formats on request.

Telephone: 0845 600 9527 Email: [email protected] Web: www.careinspectorate.com

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