Emerald Place Clinic

Ratings

• Overall

  Good

• Safe

  Good

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Good

Our view of the service

We carried out an inspection of Emerald Place Clinic on 24and 25 February 2026. The inspection was unannounced. We undertook this assessment as there were several breaches found during the previous inspection in March 2024, and some further information of concern had been received. We decided to assess if the service was safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led.

Emerald Place Clinic has 12 bedrooms, consists of 1 mixed-sex ward and offers care and treatment to young people aged between 12 and 18 years old. It provides 24-hour specialist care and treatment for those with mental health conditions. Young people can be admitted with their consent or detained under the Mental Health Act 1983.

Emerald Place Clinic has an onsite school that is registered with Ofsted

The service was last inspected in 2024 and although it was rated as good overall, there were several breaches identified The breaches we found in Regulation 9, Person Centred Care in relation to blanket restrictions; Regulation 12, Safe Care and Treatment in relation to environmental risks and use of restraint; Regulation 15, Premises and Equipment, in relation to environmental safety defects and Regulation 17, Good Governance in relation to insufficient oversight and weak monitoring systems.

At this inspection, we rated the service as Good. We found that the service had good multidisciplinary working and the young people were able to access a wide range of professionals during their admission.

The young people had access to a wide range of activities and actively engaged with the team to create the activity schedule. We found the environment to be welcoming and there was evidence that young people had contributed to the decoration of the building.

We observed lots of positive interactions between staff and young people throughout our inspection. Staff treated young people with dignity and respect.

We had feedback from carers and family members that highlighted positive experiences form them and the young people.

We found that the service has a strong learning culture and has processes in place to ensure that learning from incidents are carried forward and embedded in practice.

However,

We identified one young person was prescribed 2 antipsychotic medicines resulting in a total daily dose above 100% of the British National Formulary doses, the service had not risk assessed the prescribing as high dose antipsychotic treatment (HDAT). Whilst HDAT prescribing may be appropriate, it carries a higher risk of side effects. The impact of these side effects should be managed via the HDAT processes. We were also concerned that two medicines were prescribed when required to help manage aspects of aggression and or anxiety. However, the prescribing lacked further details on when to administer which medicine in more detail. This was addressed by the service when they were informed of the cases.