Saxon House provides care and support to people living in an ‘extra care’ housing scheme. Extra care housing is purpose built or adapted single household accommodation in a shared site or building. People’s care and housing are provided under separate contractual agreements. CQC does not regulate premises used for supported living; this inspection looked at people’s personal care provided by the service. Not everyone living at Saxon House received the regulated activity of personal care. On the day of our inspection 32 people were receiving this service.

Saxon House is situated near Norwich in Norfolk. The service provides support to people who live in their accommodation, with their own tenancy agreements.

This was the first inspection to the service since a change in registration in May 2018 when Hales Group registered the service independently of its local branch to provide the regulated activity of personal care. During November 2018, we received safeguarding concerns and other information of concern about the service. We therefore brought this scheduled inspection forward, so that we could check that people were receiving safe care. Prior to the end of the inspection it was confirmed to us that the safeguarding concerns were not substantiated and the provider had already investigated the other area of concern raised with us.

The service is required as part of its registration to have a manager registered with the CQC. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are 'registered persons'. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run. There was a registered manager in post however they had submitted an application to CQC to cancel their registration. A service manager was in post who had already submitted an application to register. At the time of this inspection their application was being progressed.

There was a quality assurance audit in place however the system was not always effective because issues identified at the inspection had not been recognised during the monitoring and auditing process.

Not all care plans were up to date and sufficiently detailed to reflect individual’s care and support needs. Some care plans were not up to date, however, others were detailed and provided staff with specific guidance on the support people required. Improvements were required to ensure risk assessments reflected people’s actual needs.

There were sufficient staff to meet people's needs. Staff had received safeguarding training and understood their responsibilities in relation to protecting people from abuse, harm and all forms of discrimination. Staff told us they would report any concerns to their managers who they were confident would take any action necessary to ensure people's safety.

There were systems in place for managing medicines and staff had completed training in relation to safe medicine administration. People were protected from the risk of infection by staff that complied with their infection prevention policy.

People were happy with the support they received to eat and drink, and were supported to maintain good health and had access to healthcare when required.

Most people were supported and cared for by staff who were kind and caring, however people had mixed views the caring nature of staff. Staff supported people to be as independent as possible. People were enabled to make decisions about their care and were involved in how their care was planned and delivered.