Great news!
The standard of care delivered by Cambridgeshire Deaf Association to deaf people has been rated as outstanding by the Care Quality Commission. Only 3% of Care providers achieve this rating!
CDA Life provides specialist community support workers and personal car assistants to deaf and deafblind children, young people and adults across Cambridgeshire.
The Commission found that people’s care and support needs were totally centred on the person, and staff responded to these in a very individualised way.
According to their report, people’s lives were enriched by staff whose communication skills were innovative in opening up a world to people so that they lived a fulfilling and meaningful life, full of opportunities.
They also found that the leadership was outstanding and care was compassionate, respectful. The report said staff were innovative in promoting independence at every opportunity. People had privacy when needed and their communications were listened
The CQC also praised the charity for ensuring that people and staff communicated with each other in a way which ensured equality and diversity was an embedded part of people’s lives.
Congratulations to our CDA Life team!
Ruth Godden is the service manager for Cambridgeshire Deaf Association. “Obviously we are absolutely delighted to be rated outstanding by CQC. We pride ourselves on being a unique, person centred service providing care in British Sign Language (BSL) and for this to be recognised is so important to us.
We were able to demonstrate the level of compassion, care and understanding for our service users and the ability to adapt communicate styles whilst also having complete cultural understanding.
Laughter has been noted in our report and this is something we see everyday, people enjoying the life that they deserve to enjoy!
We are so very proud we are able to deliver this specialist service and that we have the privilege of supporting people to be in control of their lives, with full access to information and therefore able to make fully informed decisions.
Thank you to this incredible team for all their hard work, especially during Covid-19, to be able to reach our dream of being outstanding!”
One person who uses the services regularly said, “I now live a life I should have done years ago. Ruth (the service manager) really does listen and acts on what I tell them.” 
The commission also highlighted how people were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives. It found that staff supported people in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.
Andrew Palmer is Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire Deaf Association.
“Our CDA Life personal care service is one of only a handful of providers of domiciliary care delivered in sign language in the UK and I’m delighted that the team have been recognised in this way because it shows that we put our clients first.
This rating from CQC is the result of decades of specialist experience within the care team and in part from all the teams at CDA that combine to make the experience of people in our care an outstanding one. I want to congratulate everyone involved especially the care team and registered manager Ruth.
There is another aspect to this good news. It’s that in most cases, the people we care for now, once had to endure years of misery and frustration in care settings where they felt isolated, misunderstood and ignored or even branded as aggressive when the long pent-up frustration of those agonising situations inevitably overflowed.”
Places where people could go for weeks without having a meaningful conversation and some were even over-medicated or misdiagnosed with serious illnesses. Just because they were deaf. That’s why we began providing personal care in the first place; we had to try and set people free.
Now those people have a brighter future with choice and control over their lives surrounded by caring people that understand.”
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