Essex Care Consortium - Colchester

The following is CQC's published account of its assessment, published 19 February 2025. References to “we” mean CQC. It describes findings at that time.

Date of Assessment: 31 October 2024 to 19 December 2024. The service is a residential care home providing support to people with a learning disability and autistic people. We assessed the service against the ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted. Right support: Improvements had been made to ensure the safety of people at risk of choking. The service had enough staff to meet people's needs. Staff felt valued and supported in their roles. Right care: Care was person-centred and promoted people’s dignity and privacy. Where people communicated their needs or distress through their behaviour, managers and staff were committed to managing this is a positive way. Analysis of behavioural incidents needed to improve to establish patterns and alternative measures to prevent incidents happening again. Right culture: The provider continued to not have effective governance systems in place to assess, monitor and improve the quality and safety of the service. Legal requirements were not always fully understood or met. Arrangements to monitor the safety and upkeep of the premises needed to improve. Medicines were not always managed safely. Safeguarding concerns were now being identified and reported to the appropriate authorities. Systems to log incidents, accidents, and safeguarding concerns were still not always being used effectively to identify themes or trends and prevent incidents reoccurring. The provider and managers cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff. This service has been in Special Measures since 08 February 2024. The provider demonstrated improvements have been made. The service is no longer rated as inadequate overall or in any of the key questions. Therefore, this service is no longer in Special Measures.