Young people 'placed at harm' at Sussex mental health unit
A report's uncovered failures in leadership and poor staffing levels
A watchdog has called for improvements to services at a mental health unit for children and young people in Sussex.
The CQC has downgraded the rating of Chalkhill, based at the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, from 'good' to requires improvement'.
Inspectors were called to assess the service in June this year, following concerns about the safety and wellbeing of young people aged between 12 and 17 using the service.
In their report, the CQC said issues with leadership meant staff were not able to prevent young people in their care from self-harming themselves with ligatures, or from accessing restricted wards.
The report also found there was not enough staff deployed with the skills, expertise and experience to meet the needs of the young people, who reported not feeling safe on the ward.
Neil Cox, the CQC's deputy director of operations in the south, said:
“When we inspected Chalkhill we found a decline in the quality of leadership at the service which was having an impact on the level of care being provided to the young people using this service.
“It was incredibly concerning some young people had come to harm, and others had been put at risk, because leaders had poor oversight, and didn’t always have good enough systems in place to keep them safe.
“Leaders didn’t always manage risks well, and they didn’t learn from incidents when things went wrong, to stop them from happening again.
"Also, despite the trust having an action plan in place, we didn’t feel assured those improvements were happening quick enough."
Other findings included staff not acting quickly enough to identify, remove or reduce risks on the ward, and not developing care plans to meet young people's needs.
However, the CQC also said that young people had access to a range of specialists, including nurse, psychologists and social workers, and had been supported to successfully move on from the service.
Neil Cox added:
"We have also seen more recent positive changes to the management of the service.
"They know where they need to improve and we’ll return to check on their progress.
"We will monitor them closely during this time to make sure people using the service are safe.”
Dr Jane Padmore, CEO of the Sussex Partnership Trust said she was 'very disappointed' by the findings.
"As a team, we are determined to do better. We took immediate steps to act upon the CQC's feedback and I'm confident we are making progress.
"This includes strengthening security and safety, our reporting and management processes and staff training.
"I want to assure the children, young people and families who need our services that we are committed to providing high quality care and treatment.
"A vital part of achieving this involves listening to, learning from and acting in response to feedback from the people who use our services, our regulators and staff."
You can read the report in full here.