The Charity Commission has opened an inquiry into an autism charity in Cornwall following concerns about safeguarding.
The regular said today that it was looking into concerns that trustees at Devon and Cornwall Autistic Community Trust, also known as Spectrum, “may have failed to fulfill their legal duties and responsibilities under charity law”.
The announcement follows a number of highly critical inspections of the charity’s facilities by the Care Quality Commission.
Spectrum, which provides specialist care services for autistic children and adults, said it had already “rectified” some of the issues identified in these inspections.
The CQC found five of Spectrum’s adult care facilities to be inadequate and eight requiring improvement.
One report from earlier this year, which found the charity’s Carrick care home to be inadequate, said that it was “regularly short staffed and frequently operated at minimum safe staffing levels which impacted on people’s freedoms”.
The CQC continued: “One staff member routinely worked in excess of 84 hours per week, contrary to documented risk assessments.
“This exposed people to a risk of harm and poor quality of life, and had resulted in the service being unsafely staffed on one occasion.”
Another report into the charity’s High View care home, which was also found to be inadequate, revealed that “staffing levels in the service were unsafe and insufficient to meet people’s support needs”.
The Charity Commission’s inquiry will examine whether there has been misconduct and/or mismanagement in the running and administration of the charity.
The regulator said: “The trustees have failed to take sufficient action to address all of the concerns raised by the CQC.
“This has raised regulatory concerns about how the trustees are managing the charity.”
In a statement to Third Sector, Nick Tostdevine, chair of trustees at Spectrum, said: “We are working closely with the Charity Commission and are confident they will find no misconduct and mismanagement in the administration and governance of our charity.
“Spectrum has a clear action plan, which has been created in partnership with Cornwall Council and the CQC, and we have also enlisted the support of specialist care consultants.
“Many of the issues identified by the CQC have already been rectified and we believe the Charity Commission will recognise the exceptional effort and progress that has been made by the board of trustees and our leadership team since the CQC’s inspections.
“We would like to thank the people we support, their family members and staff for their ongoing support of our charity.”