Care Quality Commission Reports published
“Kindness, compassion and respect” - staff praised in latest CQC inspection report for Leeds-based mental health and learning disability trust
Service users and carers have given Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust) overwhelmingly positive feedback on how they’re treated in the latest inspection report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
The CQC published their latest report today (Friday 27 April 2018) following an inspection of seven of the Trust’s services earlier this year as part of their new well-led inspection process.
In the report they said staff were “caring and compassionate during their interactions with patients” and that “feedback from patients confirmed that staff treated them well and with kindness, compassion and respect.”
They went on to say that “patients were positive about the care and treatment they received and felt involved in the decision-making” and that “staff involved carers and others close to patients in decisions about the care and treatment provided by the service.”
The report shows that 85% of the Trust’s services are now rated as either good or outstanding. However there are still a number of issues to resolve including three services rated as requires improvement alongside some actions the Trust needs to take centrally. As such the Trust has been rated requires improvement overall.
Headlines
The Trust has been given the following overall ratings by the CQC.
This is an improvement on the Trust’s previous inspection in 2016 when it was rated requires improvement for well-led.
Seven of the Trust’s services, rather than all of them, were inspected as part of the CQC’s new well-led inspection process. They were:
- acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units
- forensic inpatient/secure wards
- child and adolescent mental health wards
- wards for people with learning disability or autism
- mental health crisis services and health-based places of safety
- The National Inpatient Centre for Psychological Medicine
- The Specialised Supported Living Service
Based on the recent inspection and the one conducted in 2016, you can see a full breakdown of how the Trust’s services are now rated in our ratings at a glance poster.
Services highlighted in the report
Our mental health crisis services and health-based places of safety are celebrating an improved rating since their last inspection in 2016. They moved up from requires improvement in three of the five areas to good, and now have an overall rating of good overall.
Our Specialised Supported Living Service which supports people with learning disabilities has made huge improvements which have been recognised in a separate report released in March 2018. They are now rated good in all domains and outstanding for caring.
The National Centre for Psychological Medicine has been recognised as being outstanding in being effective and caring – and inspectors said the service “provided patients with high quality care that was nationally recognised and based on the best available evidence”.
Our Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in York has now been rated good across all domains after the inspectors upgraded their rating for safety to good from requires improvement. They also said the service managed risks well, had good staffing levels providing one to one support with patients, and that patients and carers gave positive feedback about their care.
Changes since last inspection
The CQC undertook a full comprehensive inspection of the Trust in July 2016 and published its report in November 2016. In the 2016 report the CQC issued four requirement notices including:
- Meeting requirements on same sex accommodation
- Improving emergency equipment and medication checks
- Addressing a lack of physical health monitoring of antipsychotic medication, and
- Ensuring incidents were reported or in a timely way
Inspectors found that most of those issues from the 2016 inspection had been addressed by the Trust. The main issues that are highlighted in the report include:
- Levels of supervision of clinical staff in some departments, and
- Patient records were not always being maintained in a consistent manner.
Our forensic low secure services in Leeds and York remained as requires improvement, as did our wards for people with a learning disability or autism. Our acute wards for adults of working age and our psychiatric intensive care unit were downgraded from good to requires improvement.
Statement from our chief exec
Sara Munro, Chief Executive of Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are grateful to the CQC for their assessment of our services which will help us to continue to improve the quality of care we provide, and ensure we can demonstrate it.
“There are many examples of fantastic quality care in the report and I’m delighted to see these have been recognised. Our trust vision and values are at the heart of what we do and this came through loud and clear at all levels of our organisation.
“I am particularly heartened to see the positive feedback from service users and carers about the treatment they receive from staff across the board – which was also witnessed by the inspection teams. This is well deserved and staff should be proud of themselves.
“I am also pleased that, whilst the CQC raised a number of risk areas, there were no incidences or evidence of service users receiving poor treatment or inappropriate care.
“There are however a number of areas we still need to address which has meant our overall rating has stayed at requires improvement. This is very disappointing news for us, particularly as services have worked very hard and made so many improvements, many of which have been recognised in the CQC’s report.
“We’re already addressing a number of the big issues raised in the report. For example, we’ve been working hard to improve our rates of clinical supervision by embedding a new central system. We’ve still got some work to do to make it as easy as possible for staff to work with this but we’ve made great progress.
“We’re also making a huge investment in our patient records system to make it easier for staff to use, improve record keeping and to get better information out of it.
“We’re also making good progress on finding more suitable accommodation for the National Inpatient Centre for Psychological Medicine. We are in a constructive dialogue with our partners at Leeds Teaching Hospitals and we hope to resolve this long standing issue soon.
“I am confident that we can make the necessary changes rapidly. I’m keen to work with the CQC and I would encourage them to return for another well-led inspection ahead of schedule so we can achieve the ratings we deserve.
“In the meantime, the senior team and I are committed to working with staff across the Trust to make these improvements happen and make them stick. I know that we provide great quality care as I see it for myself every time I visit our front line services.”