Lifeways Community Care (New Barnet)

“< Date of assessment 29 May to 26 June 2025. This assessment was in response to concerns raised with the Care Quality Commission. Lifeways Community Care (New Barnet) provides personal care for people living in their own tenancies. The service provides support to autistic people and people with learning difficulties. At the time of our assessment there were 29 people receiving support under the registered location across 6 properties and we visited 3 properties during the assessment. We assessed the service against “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. During the assessment we looked at all 5 Key questions. The provider was in breach of 6 regulations relating to person centred care, dignity and respect, need for consent, safe care and treatment, good governance and staffing. The service was not always managed in a safe way. Senior managers and leaders did not have effective oversight of the service which placed people at risk of receiving unsafe care and support. Risks to people had not been assessed and planned for, this meant staff did not always have the necessary information to care for people. Managers were not reviewing incidents and accidents which meant there was no oversight of learning from incidents. Staff were not recording information in a consistent way, which meant care plans were not comprehensive and staff did not always have the necessary information to care for people. Some people's care plans were inaccurate and lacked information about their needs, medical conditions and other information, which meant staff were not provided with clear guidance to help care for people. People did not always receive respectful or dignified care. There was a lack of person-centred practices to ensure people's needs were met. Some staff were working long hours which meant they were caring for people without sufficient breaks, this was unsafe practice. The provider was not aware of this practice which told us, there was ineffective oversight, auditing and governance process in place as senior managers were not aware of this working practice. We brought this to the attention of the area manager and action was taken on the day of inspection to ensure staff were working within safe staffing levels. There were no effective auditing systems in place, and this had not been identified by local managers or senior leaders. We found the service was not following the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. There was no evidence all practical steps had been taken to ensure decisions were made in the people’s best interest. The service has been placed in special measures. The purpose of special measures is to ensure that services providing inadequate care make significant improvements. Special measures provide a framework within which we use our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of care they provide.”