• Mental Health
  • Independent mental health service

Ballington House

Overall: Good read more about inspection ratings

Ballington Gardens, Leek, Staffordshire, ST13 5LW (01538) 399796

Provided and run by:
Elysium Healthcare (Acorn Care) Limited

Latest inspection summary

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Background to this inspection

Updated 7 December 2021

Ballington House is located in Leek, Staffordshire. It is an independent hospital providing 13 mental health rehabilitation beds for women aged 18 and over with complex mental health needs. Long stay/rehabilitation mental health wards for working age adults provide care and treatment for people whose needs are more complex, which require them to stay in hospital for longer. People may be referred here after a period on an acute ward when they have not recovered enough to be discharged home. Rehabilitation wards may also provide step-down for people who are moving on from secure mental health services. The hospital is run by Elysium Healthcare (Acorn Care) Limited. Patients admitted to this service have a primary diagnosis of mental illness or co-morbid conditions including; learning disability, personality disorder and substance misuse and may be detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. The service benefits from a multidisciplinary team of support workers, mental health, general and learning disabilities nurses, psychology assistants, occupational therapy assistants and a psychiatrist. The unit has a combination of self-contained apartments and studio apartments. Patients have their own kitchen, lounge, and en-suite bedrooms.

The hospital has a registered manager.

Ballington House is registered for the following regulated activities:

  • Assessment or medical treatment for persons detained under the Mental Health Act (MHA) 1983
  • Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

We most recently inspected the service in January 2018 and carried out a full comprehensive inspection. We rated the service as outstanding overall, with key questions rated; caring and responsive as outstanding and safe, effective and well-led as good.

We told the provider it should take the following action to improve:

  • The provider should consider offering staff access to specialist training to further improve practice. (Regulation 18).

You can read our findings from all of our previous inspections by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Ballington House on our website at: www.cqc.org.uk

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 7 December 2021

Ballington House is located in Leek, Staffordshire. It is an independent hospital providing 13 mental health rehabilitation beds for women aged 18 and over with complex mental health needs. The hospital is run by Elysium Healthcare (Acorn Care) Limited. The service supports women who require intensive locked rehabilitation in a hospital environment. The service provides a combination of studio apartments and self-contained apartments.

We most recently inspected the service in January 2018 and carried out a full comprehensive inspection. We rated the service as outstanding overall, with key questions rated; caring and responsive as outstanding and safe, effective and well-led as good.

We undertook this inspection as part of a random selection of services rated Good and Outstanding to test the reliability of our new monitoring approach.

We undertook an unannounced inspection of all key questions:

Are services safe?

Are services effective?

Are services caring?

Are services responsive?

Are services well-led?

We visited the location on the 23 September 2021 and carried out further remote interviews and reviewing evidence until 7 October 2021.

Our rating of this location went down. We rated it as good overall because:

  • The service provided safe care. Environments were safe and clean and there were enough nurses and doctors. Staff assessed and managed risk well. They minimised the use of restrictive practices, managed medications safely and followed good practice with respect to safeguarding.
  • The service carried out scenario-based training for incidents such as how to respond to barricading, headbanging and ligatures.
  • Staff developed holistic, recovery-oriented care plans informed by a comprehensive assessment. They provided a range of treatments suitable to the needs of the patients cared for in a mental health rehabilitation ward and in line with national guidance about best practice. Staff engaged in clinical audit to evaluate the quality of care they provided.
  • Activities were available seven days a week for patients to engage in.
  • Managers ensured staff received most training, supervision and appraisal. Nursing staff worked well together as a multidisciplinary team and with external providers.
  • Staff understood and discharged their roles and responsibilities under the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
  • Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, and understood the individual needs of patients. They actively involved patients, families and carers in care decisions.
  • Staff planned and managed patients discharge well and liaised well with services that would provide aftercare. As a result, discharge was rarely delayed for other than a clinical reason.
  • The service was well-led and the governance processes ensured that procedures ran smoothly.

However:

  • When patients went on unescorted leave, medications that had been dispensed by nurses from their original containers were not labelled. A separate piece of paper listed the medications and when they should be taken. There was no way of identifying which medication was which if the two were to be separated.
  • Opportunities for learning were not always recognised. The service did not carry out regular and random reviews of CCTV to provide learning and improve care and treatment. CCTV was only reviewed following a patient allegation or to monitor staff compliance for wearing PPE.
  • Observations were not carried out in line with the provider’s policy. Observation records were prepopulated with times that did not allow staff to carry out checks randomly.
  • Patients did not have access to a qualified clinical psychologist on site due to a recent vacancy.
  • Not all staff were trained in immediate life support. At the time of the inspection, only 57% of staff had received the training.
  • Not all staff were bare below the elbow and were observed wearing watches and jewellery. Therefore it was unclear how staff would be able to follow good hand hygiene practice. The hospital did not have a monitoring system in place, such as regular testing to help control the spread of infections such as COVID-19.