NW Counselling Hub

Updated 1 July 2021

NW Counselling Hub aim to provide high quality, effective, treatment in safe surroundings and to make the patient`s visit comfortable and productive as possible. They provide psychiatric assessments to patients with a wide variety of mental health needs including anxiety, depression, personality disorders, stress, addictions and eating disorders. Patients are referred through their GP or self-refer.

NW Counselling employ two consultant psychiatrists, for routine care, that carry out regular examinations and assessments to establish the needs and wishes of individual patients. Treatment options are explained, and choices respected.

If someone has a mental health emergency, and is a registered patient, the service will endeavour to speak to them and give advice on the day of contact and to see them within an appropriate period following contact. Other emergency care is by arrangement and availability.

Patients are regularly consulted through informal chats and Patient Satisfaction Surveys. Patient`s Rights and Diversities are always honoured and respected.

Appointments are established according to the needs and of the individual.

How we inspected this service

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 1 July 2021

This service is rated as Good overall

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an unannounced comprehensive inspection at NW Counselling Hub as part of our ongoing comprehensive mental health inspection programme.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in August 2019 to provide treatment of disease, disorder or injury by the prescribing of medication and has never been inspected.

Dr S Jajawi is the registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

Our key findings were:

The provider conducted safety risk assessments and had appropriate safety policies, which were regularly reviewed. They outlined clearly who to go to for further guidance. The service had systems to safeguard children and vulnerable adults from abuse.

Patients received coordinated and person-centred care. consultant psychiatrists referred to, and communicated effectively with, other services when appropriate, for example memory assessment services.

The service sought feedback on the quality of clinical care patients received. Feedback from patients was positive about the way consultant psychiatrists and administrator treated people.

The provider understood the needs of their patients and improved services in response to those needs. They offered to switch off the camera facility if this caused anxiety whilst undertaking virtual appointments. The facilities and premises were appropriate for the services delivered.

The provider had a clear vision and set of values for the service which included aa realistic strategy and supporting business plans to achieve priorities. The registered manager had developed and monitored progress against delivery of the vision, values and strategy and their role in achieving them.

We saw the following outstanding practice:

All the letters sent to patients contained information on a variety of organisations that provide out of hours support, for example The Samaritans, Sane Line, Single Point of Access and Emergency services.