- Independent mental health service
Chadwick Lodge
Report from 15 January 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Chadwick Lodge hospital is situated in Eaglestone, Milton Keynes. It provides male and female forensic secure, female Long stay rehabilitation and male acute admission service for patients with mental health needs, who may also have related issues such as substance misuse. It offers care and treatment to patients with a dual diagnosis of mental illness/personality disorder and mild learning disabilities. We carried out our on-site assessment on 14 February 2024. We looked at 6 quality statements: safeguarding, involving people to manage risks, safe environments, delivering evidence-based care and treatment, how staff, teams and services work together and equity in experiences and outcomes. During our assessment, we found concerns around the timings of observations, which resulted in a breach of regulation 12 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can find more details of our concerns in the evidence category findings. During this assessment, we looked at forensic secure wards.
People's experience of this service
We spoke with 23 patients. Patients told us staff respect privacy and dignity and that staff listen and understand how to resolve problems and are caring and support with appointments. One patient told us they felt safe on the wards, and they had input into their care and treatment. However, patients also told us it could be difficult to get hot drinks, that ward rounds were not regular enough and were rushed, there was a high number of agency staff, and that staff could be abrupt when interacting with them. The provider told us that agency usage was 9% for March 2024 and was reducing. We spoke with 6 family members. All family members we spoke with told us that they felt their loved one was safe at Chadwick Lodge, they felt involved in their care and treatment and they knew how to raise concerns if they needed to. During the assessment, we saw evidence that a community meeting for all patients and staff was held on each ward on a regular basis. These meetings had a set agenda and included discussion about ward environment, relationships on the ward, planned events and activities, restrictive interventions, and blanket policies. The community meeting minutes also showed what actions had been taken following previous meetings. In addition to the community meetings, on weekday mornings a ward ‘business meeting’ was attended by all staff and patients to decide activities for the day, make leave requests and raise any concerns.