Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust ‘requires improvement’

England’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals has rated the services provided by Coventry and Warwickshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust as ‘requires improvement’ following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

CQC inspected the services provided by Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust between 26 and 30 June 2017.

A team of inspectors visited hospital wards and community-based mental health services.

The CQC rated the trust as ‘requires improvement’ overall. It was rated ‘good’ for being caring and ‘requires improvement’ for being safe, effective, response and well-led.

The CQC has told the trust it must take action in several areas, including: the trust must ensure there is consistency in the ongoing monitoring and reduction of identified physical and mental health care risks in wards for older people; action must be taken to complete the trust’s work to remove identified ligature risks; seclusion rooms must be fit for purpose and the risk to patients and staff when accessing and leaving seclusion rooms is reduced; all referrals must be clinically triaged on the day of receipt in specialist community mental health teams for children and young people; and waiting lists for access to treatment must be reduced in specialist community mental health teams for children and young people.

Paul Lelliott, CQC’s Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals, said: “Our inspectors found that the trust must make a number of improvements to bring its services up to a level that would earn a rating of Good overall. The trust had not made all the necessary changes from our previous inspection in April 2016 to change their rating.

“In particular, there were long waiting times for children and young people to access treatment for mental health problems. We also found long waits for children and young people to be assessed for a neurodevelopment disorder, such as autism. There were backlogs of referrals waiting to be triaged in specialist community mental health services for children and young people.

“The trust had not provided staff with specialist training to undertake their role on all wards for older people. Staff were not monitoring patients sufficiently to reduce risk. We issued the trust with a warning notice to improve care and treatment. The trust have not challenged the warning notice and had put in immediate plans to address the problems that we found.

“In addition, the trust had not completed its works programme to reduce ligature risks on acute mental health wards that had been identified during the previous inspection."