North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) has been rated Good overall by the Care Quality Commission.
The trust, which was inspected in October and November 2017, was rated Good for being effective, caring, responsive and well-led. It was rated Requires Improvement for being safe.
Following CQC’s previous inspection in 2016, the trust had implemented a comprehensive improvement plan and the majority of CQC’s recommendations had been put into practice.
During this most recent inspection, only one of the 15 core services remains rated as Requires Improvement - wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care unit. The rest are rated as Good and one core service (child and adolescent mental health wards) is now rated Outstanding.
The most significant improvement was for child and adolescent mental health inpatient wards where, in an 18 month period, the ratings for the service had improved from Inadequate to Outstanding. The trust had shown vision and strong leadership in reviewing the model of the service being provided.
In addition the trust had stable leadership through the board and the executive leadership team who had an appropriate range of skills, knowledge and experience.
The trust was making good use of IT and promoting mobile working. The systems also promoted access at different levels of the organisation to timely information on performance.
However, the ‘safe’ key question remains rated as Requires Improvement and there are further improvements that the trust must make in six of the core services. This includes addressing areas such as ensuring staff had completed mandatory training, hand-washing, fire safety, medicines management, use of prone restraint, updating risk assessments and maintaining clinical equipment. The trust must address these as a matter of urgency.
There is also scope for the trust to improve leadership and management further. This included reviewing the capacity of the executive leadership team, having a clear strategy for the trust, strengthening board visits and the feedback from these, supporting governors to perform their duties, strengthening the freedom to speak up guardian role and completing the review of some of the key documents used by the board as part of their assurance process.
CQC’s Deputy Chief Inspector (Mental Health), Paul Lelliott, said:
“There was evidence of some fine improvements to the standard of care at North East London NHS Foundation Trust. We found one area of Outstanding service in the trust’s child and adolescent mental health inpatient wards.
“While there are some areas where improvements still need to be made generally I am pleased with the progress made here and want to see it to continue in the future.”
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There was evidence of some fine improvements to the standard of care at North East London NHS Foundation Trust.
Paul Lelliott, Deputy Chief Inspector (Mental Health)