The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published a report following an inspection of mental health crisis services and health-based places of safety, at Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, in June last year. The service has been re-rated as good, however some improvements are needed.
Inspectors visited the service to check on people’s safety, due to concerns CQC had received from people using the service.
During the inspection, CQC found breaches of regulation regarding staffing and governance, not enough appropriately trained staff, and some ineffective systems and processes. CQC asked the trust to submit an action plan showing what action it is taking in response to these concerns.
Since the inspection, CQC has been engaging with the service to ensure people are receiving safe care.
The service has been re-rated as good overall, as well as for being safe, effective, caring and responsive. It has dropped from good to requires improvement for being well-led.
The overall rating for Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust wasn’t affected by this inspection and remains rated as requires improvement.
Inspectors found:
- Most people felt staff were kind, caring, respectful and interested in their wellbeing
- People had appropriate risk assessments in place which were regularly updated, and people and their carers had been involved in creating them.
However:
- There were not enough staff who were appropriately trained to ensure people’s safety and meet their needs
- Some external partners felt the trust did not communicate well with them.
Due to a large-scale transformation programme at CQC, this report has not published as soon after the inspection as it should have done. The programme involved changes to the technology CQC uses but resulted in problems with the systems and processes rather than the intended benefits. The amount of time taken to publish this report falls far short of what people using services and the trust should be able to expect and CQC apologises for this.
While publication of some reports has been delayed, any immediate action that CQC needed to take to protect people using services has not been affected. CQC is taking urgent steps to ensure that inspection reports are published in a much more timely manner.
The full report will be published on CQC’s website in the next few days.