Archived: St Andrews Healthcare Northampton

Ratings

• Overall

  Inadequate

• Safe

  Inadequate

• Caring

  Inadequate

• Well-led

  Inadequate

Our view of the service

We inspected St Andrews Healthcare Northampton between 11 July and 13 August 2025 (on site) and until end August 2025 (off site). This inspection was an unannounced focused inspection. This was carried out in response to a serious incident of concern which had occurred on a learning disability / autism ward within the secure division. We were aware there had been a number of allegations from patients alleging abuse by staff, on different wards across the hospital. At the time of this inspection, internal investigations were ongoing.

St Andrew’s Healthcare Northampton is part of St Andrew’s Healthcare, which is a registered charity. The charity provides specialist mental healthcare for patients who may have complex presentations, with challenging mental health needs. During our inspection we visited wards across the medium and low secure wards, to include learning disability / autism wards (LDA); wards for older people with mental health problems and wards for people with acquired brain injury.

During our inspection, we visited the following wards as part of the assessment:

• Brook ward: a low secure ward for persons diagnosed with a major mental illness, Learning Disability and/ or Autism for men with 10 beds
• Oak ward: a recovery-orientated medium secure service for women aged over 18 with 10 beds
• Bracken ward: a blended forensic admissions Ward for women with 11 beds
• Fairbairn ward: a medium secure service for deaf men with 17 beds
• Tallis ward: an admission, assessment and rehabilitation ward for males with 11 beds
• Elgar ward: an admission, assessment and rehabilitation ward for females with 12 beds
• Walton ward: an admission, assessment and rehabilitation ward for males living with Huntington’s disease with 14 beds.
• Redwood ward: a specialist older peoples ward for males with complex dementia and / or progressive neurological conditions.

During this assessment we assessed the following service groups: Forensic inpatient or secure wards; wards for older people with mental health problems and services for people with acquired brain injury. We assessed 14 quality statements under 3 key questions: safe, caring and well led.

We rated the service as Inadequate. This service remains in special measures. The purpose of special measures is to ensure that services providing inadequate care make significant improvements. Special measures provide a framework within which we user our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of the care they provide.

In instances where CQC has begun a process of regulatory action, we may publish this information on our website after any representations and/or appeals have been concluded, if the action has been taken forward.