Albrighton care company now rated 'Outstanding' after inspection

An Albrighton based company which provides support to children and adults of all ages living with physical disabilities and sensory impairments has had its rating upgraded from good to outstanding.

AJ Case Management has been upgraded after an inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in March.

Run by an organisation of the same name, the service supports people who have sustained a catastrophic injury, including brain injuries, as a result of clinical negligence or a personal injury. At the time of inspection as part of a routine monitoring by CQC, 14 people were being supported.

AJ Case Management was re-rated as outstanding for how caring it is. The ratings for how effective, responsive and well-led it is have improved from good to outstanding. Safe was re-rated as good.

Inspectors found:

• Staff placed people at the centre of their care and supported them to make decisions about their lives and routines, supporting them to manage their health and wellbeing.

• Staff used a wide range of assessment tools to identify the level of support people needed for areas of their life such as mobility, nutrition and personal care before creating bespoke care plans with people and their families. This meant people received highly effective, personalised care.

• Staff made excellent use of assistive technology to enhance people’s independence, such as arranging specialist support to adapt a person’s wheelchair so they could independently control the television.

• Staff understood and managed risks to people and their environment and provided care, which was tailored to, and fully met, people’s individual needs.

• Staff worked with people and healthcare partners to establish and maintain safe systems of care and ensure continuity of care when people moved between services.

• Staff managed medicines safely and had step-by-step guidance in how to give people medicines according to their requirements, e.g. as liquids or creams.

• Leaders encouraged reflective practice to help support staff development, enhance professional learning, and improve outcomes for people using the service.
• The service had an excellent learning culture where incidents were thoroughly investigated, and lessons learnt were shared with staff.

Amanda Lyndon, CQC’s deputy director of adult social care for the West Midlands, said: “When we inspected AJ Case Management, we found a service committed to ensuring the best outcomes for people, being delivered by staff who advocated for them to live their lives how they wanted to.

“ It was lovely to hear consistently positive feedback from relatives, one of whom specifically highlighted the massive improvement in a person’s independence and general wellbeing thanks to the support they received.

“This positive impact was further cemented thanks to people being supported by small staff teams, ensuring they received consistent care by staff who knew them exceptionally well.

“Overall, staff and leaders should be incredibly proud of the culture they have created to ensure people get the very best care outcomes and certainly deserve the hugely positive feedback we received from people and their relatives.”