Archived: St Andrews Healthcare Northampton

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

Staff treated patients with kindness, compassion and dignity. Staff understood patients’ needs and acted promptly when patients needed assistance. Patients said that staff treated them well. Staff engaged with patients in activities that patients enjoyed. Patients were supported to communicate. The service supported patients to engage in cultural, social and religious activities. Whenever possible, staff supported patients to make choices and have control of their care. Patients’ friends and families were welcomed to the service. The service ensured that staff were well supported. We found no breaches of regulations in relation to this key question.

We have not awarded this service a score for Caring.

Find out about when we will not publish a key question score and what we look at when we assess Caring.

The service treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity.

Staff were discreet, respectful, and responsive when caring for patients. Staff engaged with patients in a positive and caring manner. We observed staff providing reassurance to patients who were becoming distressed.

Staff gave patients help, emotional support and advice when they needed it. Staff talked about the importance of making every interaction count, in order to demonstrate compassion and provide personalised care. On Walton ward, a patient had recently died following a long illness. They had been a patient on the ward for several years. This had been a very sad time for staff and patients. Staff had managed this situation with sensitivity and had received support from a psychologist to explain what had happened to patients. All staff said they enjoyed spending time with patients.

Patients said staff treated them well and behaved kindly. Most patients spoke positively about staff. These patients said that staff were nice and that they were good friends. A small number of patients were more negative. One patient said at times they felt ignored. Some patients had profound communication needs which meant we were unable to discuss their experiences of being in hospital. These patients appeared to be happy. They were engaged in activities such as watching television, tidying their room or sitting in the garden. One patient was able to give short responses to prompts. He said he was having a good day. Interactions with staff appeared positive. Staff spoke to patients in a kind and gentle manner. One member of staff was playing football with a patient, which they were both enjoying.

Staff understood and respected the individual needs of each patient. Many staff said they took pride in how well they knew their patients. They achieved this through spending time with patients, involving patients’ family in care and treatment and supporting patients engage in activities. Patients listed lots of activities they did with staff and said that they enjoyed these. This included going shopping, cooking food together, going swimming and engaging in craft activities.

The service treated people as individuals and made sure their care, support and treatment met their needs and preferences, taking account of their strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

The service could support and make adjustments for disabled people and those with communication needs or other specific needs. Speech and language therapists worked with patients to develop communication aids. For example, some patients were supported to communicate through pointing to words and pictures on boards that were specifically designed to include their needs and preferences. Staff also supported non-verbal patients to communicate using electronic tablets. Some staff were able to identify and respond to cues from facial expressions, although they recognised that this was very difficult for staff who were not familiar with the patient.

The service provided a variety of food to meet the dietary and cultural needs of individual patients. The service was able to provide patients with halal or kosher meals. Mealtimes were rescheduled for patients who observed Ramadan.

Patients had access to spiritual, religious and cultural support. The hospital had its own chaplaincy service. Staff had supported patients to attend a mosque. Staff received positive feedback about this from the patient’s family. Patients were able to make appointments with an Afro-Caribbean hairdresser.

The service promoted people’s independence, so they knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

Staff promoted independence and encouraged patients to make choices whenever possible. For example, some patients have severe cognitive impairments. When supporting these patients, staff helped them to make choices, such as a choice of clothes to wear, by showing different options.

Staff made sure patients could access information on their rights and how to complain. The service displayed information on how patients and their families could make a complaint. Displays also included information about patients’ right under the Mental Health Act.

The service had an outside space that patients could access easily. All wards had a garden that patients could access. Gardens were well maintained, with tables and chairs. Some patients were involved in gardening.

Some patients could make their own hot drinks and snacks, but usually they were closely supported by staff in doing so. Any restrictions on access to drinks were recorded in the restrictive practice log and reviewed at clinical governance meetings.

The service listened to and understood people’s needs, views and wishes. They responded to these and acted to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress.

Staff involved patients and gave them access to their care planning and risk assessments. When patients found it difficult to engage in care planning, staff sought to involve their families and carers. Patients attended ward rounds and community meetings. Most patients found it difficult to explain what was in their care plan, but some patients said they had a copy of the document and had discussed this with staff.

Most patients across all the wards needed some assistance with eating and personal care. Patients had care plans for personal care. This ensured that sufficient numbers of staff, in some cases up to 4 staff for one patient, were allocated to these tasks. The nurse in charge planned the shifts to ensure that personal care was carried out by staff who were familiar with the patient. Staff supervised meals with patients according to the individual needs and care plan for each patient.

Patients could give feedback on the service and their treatment and staff supported them to do this. Staff facilitated community meetings in a way that supported patients to participate. For example, on Walton Ward, staff asked patients straightforward questions and used communication aids. All wards held a community meeting each month. Feedback from patients was usually positive. The meetings provided an opportunity for patients to talk about what they like, what they may be finding difficult and how they would like the service to improve. The service encouraged patients, and their friends and families to provide feedback on the service. The service used a feedback questionnaire. The service received 30-40 responses each month. Data from September 2024 to February 2025 showed that 73% of responses were positive. Responses to questions about feeling safe, staff being kind and caring and staff listening to patients all scored 8 out of 10.

Feedback from patients’ families and carers was mixed. Some families found communication with the service was difficult and said they were not contacted when incidents occurred. The family of one patient was particularly concerned about high-risk incidents that their family member had been involved in. Other carers and family members were very positive about the service. They said they felt the service was safe, they had been invited to multidisciplinary team meetings and they felt their family member had improved whilst they had been at the hospital.

Staff made sure patients could access advocacy services. Advocates visited the wards and attended meetings with patients. However, staff said that the contract for providing advocacy would be changing at the start of April 2025 from a service commissioned by the hospital to a service commissioned by the local authority. Staff did not know what the impact of this would be.

The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of staff and supported and enabled them to deliver person centred care.

Staff consistently said they felt well-supported by their managers. Managers supported staff who needed time off for ill health. One member of staff told us that their manager had visited them and been very supportive during a time when they were unable to work. Another said that managers were very supportive when they sustained an injury at work.

The provider had achieved accreditation as an employer that was positive about mental health and as an organisation that was committed to inclusive recruitment practices for disabled people.