Elm House

The following is CQC's published account of its assessment, published 5 January 2026. References to “we” mean CQC. It describes findings at that time.

Elm House is a ‘care home’ providing personal care and support to people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. We inspected the home on-site on 3 July 2025. At the time of the assessment, the service was supporting 4 people and had 1 vacancy. This was an unannounced assessment, which means the provider was not told an assessment was going to be starting beforehand.

We assessed a total of 32 quality statements from the safe, caring, effective, responsive and well-led key questions. During the inspection, we also did general observations to help us understand people’s experience of care. At our last inspection, we rated the home requires improvement and found 5 breaches of regulation. These were around risk assessing, staffing, nutrition and hydration, infection control and governance of the home. At this inspection, we found these had been addressed and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations

We expect health and social care providers to guarantee people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices and independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ is the guidance CQC follows to make assessments and judgements about services supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people and providers must have regard to it. We found the provider was meeting the principles of this.

People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice. The service did not use any form of restraint when people experienced periods of distress. Staff knew people well and had been trained in de-escalation techniques. Staff supported people to make decisions following best practice in decision-making. Staff communicated with people in ways that met their needs. Staff supported people with their medicines in a way that promoted their independence and achieved the best possible health outcome.People received kind and compassionate care. Staff protected and respected people’s privacy and dignity. They understood and responded to their individual needs. Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. The service worked well with other agencies to do so. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse, and they knew how to apply it. The service had enough appropriately skilled staff to meet people’s needs and keep them safe.

People received compassionate care that was tailored to their needs. Staff knew and understood people well and were responsive. Staff evaluated the quality of support provided to people, involving the person, their families and other professionals as appropriate. Staff valued and acted upon people’s views.