Care Quality Commission

Our CQC rating

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated our Trust as Good, recognising the hard work of our staff, our strong values which put people first and in the centre and that we always aim to improve.

In May 2023 the Care Quality Commission (CQC) visited our Trust to carry out inspections of our adult acute mental health inpatient wards, psychiatric intensive care wards, and forensic inpatient wards.

We welcome the feedback from the CQC and are already using this as part of our improvement work. We are disappointed that the two services inspected were rated as ‘requires improvement’, though the Trust retains its rating of ‘Good’ overall.

The CQC has acknowledged the significant pressures we are facing around staffing. As a Trust we continue to put in place measures to help us address the national and regional staffing challenges in mental health and forensic services, which along with the increase in demand for mental health services can impact on the care we provide.

Since we received the initial inspection report we have continued work that was already in motion to improve our services. This includes providing Oliver McGowan learning disability and autism training for our staff, reducing use of restrictive practises, targeted work to improve staff appraisal rates, and our care planning improvement programme which is already achieving positive results. We always seek to learn and will ensure we act upon all the findings from the CQC to better improve the care we give to our local people.

The CQC also highlighted many positives from what they saw during their visit. They noted that our staff treat people with compassion and kindness, understand the individual needs of people, and support our patients to understand and manage their care, treatment or condition. They also saw evidence that our Trust has successfully created a culture on our wards where patients and staff felt supported and were able to express their views. It is good to see these clear examples of how our staff live our Trust values every day and put people at the heart of their care.

We are updating our rating chart and overall rating poster, which will be published here when available.

Full reports are available on the CQC website.

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