Report: Rutland mental health services 'require improvement'
The service retained its 'good' rating for caring
Improvements still need to be made to the Trust running Rutland and Leicestershire’s mental health services.
Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (LPT) has been rated as ‘requires improvements’ after a surprise inspection last summer.
The Care Quality Commission said LPT had failed to make all the changes it was ordered to after it was rated ‘inadequate’ – the lowest possible rating – in 2018.
The healthcare watchdog found that improvements had been made, but said there were still a number off issues which needed to be fixed.
Issues uncovered by the inspectors included staff walking in on patients who were changing without waiting for permission to enter their room, some staff not completing required basic training, and patients were not always able to call for help.
The watchdog also found broken windows, dirty and damaged furniture, and broken call bells and patient phones in some wards.
However, it did find some improvements across the service, which included better leadership, staff feeling happier in their roles and the elimination of mixed-sex dormitories.
Angela Hillery, chief executive of the Trust, told a Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Joint Health Scrutiny meeting last week: “I’m pleased to say as a result of that inspection that we no longer have any core services rated inadequate overall.
“That’s a really important step. It’s not enough, but it is an important step.”
The CQC carried out a focused inspection on three of the services areas which previously had raised the most concerns – two adult mental health services rated ‘inadequate’ in 2018, and an adult learning disability service rated ‘requires improvement’.
As a result of the summer inspection, all three are now rated ‘requires improvement’.
However, patient safety was still found to be ‘inadequate’ in one of the metal health services.
Patients did not have access to call alarms, despite there being boxes of unused wrist alarms in one ward. This meant patients would ‘have to shout to call for urgent attention’.
The Trust said it has since made sure all patients on adult mental health wards have access to alarms.
Staff had also not completed all the required training – including in basic life support. In one ward, only 38 per cent of staff were up to date on their training.
Training had been suspended because of the pandemic, according to the Trust.
More than a quarter of the maintenance requests submitted between December 2020 and May 2021 were still outstanding in the CQC report.
LPT said maintenance is carried out externally and it is working to bring this back under their control.
The Trust was told in 2018 to get rid of dormitory accommodation on all its wards to give patients greater privacy in line with Government regulations.
This had still not been achieved by the time of the inspection, with work only starting in March 2021. It is expected to be completed by 2023.
The watchdog also found that staff knocked but did not always wait before entering patient rooms, ‘which had resulted in staff walking into their room while they were changing their clothes’.
Bedrooms in some wards were also missing curtains or blinds and privacy curtains around beds did not always close fully.
LPT retained its good rating for caring across the service as a whole, which it has said is a ‘testiment’ to its staff who have gone ‘above and beyond’.
However, one patient complained ‘staff had been rude, threatening and disrespectful towards them, which a relative also confirmed’.
Another claimed they had ‘watched a staff member walking past a distressed patient and did not seek to reassure them or ask what was wrong’.
The watchdog added that two recent safeguarding referrals had been made on one ward following concerns around the behaviour of two members of agency staff.