Some improvements found at Leicestershire Partnership NHS trust

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found some improvement in Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAHMS) but says more work is needed across the trust.

CQC inspectors visited the trust’s community heath services for adults, acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care unit, community based mental health services for adults of working age, mental health crisis services and health based place of safety and specialist community mental health services for children and young people between October and November 2017.

The inspection identified a number of improvements the trust made, including strengthening the process for monitoring patients on the waiting list in specialist community mental health services for children and young people and improving care planning in the trust’s crisis service.

It also found an effective process for reporting incidents, and found staff were kind, caring and respectful towards patients and most patients spoke positively about their care and said they were involved in this.

However, CQC said the trust needs to undertake further work to ensure all services meet the standards people should be able to expect.

Although the overall rating for the trust has not changed as a result of the inspection, and it remains at ‘requires improvement’, community mental health services for children and young people is now rated as ‘requires improvement’, having previously been rated as ‘inadequate’.

Paul Lelliott, deputy chief inspector for hospitals and lead for mental health, said: “We found a number of improvements had been made with regard to the services we inspected at Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust. This was particularly evident in specialist community mental health services for children and young people which was rated as ‘inadequate’ following our previous inspection in November 2016.

“Those improvements have resulted in CQC being able to change the rating for that service to ‘requires improvement.

“While those improvements haven’t resulted in a change to the trust’s overall rating of ‘requires improvement’, this demonstrates that it is working to improve services for its patients.

“The trust board knows what it must do now and we will return to check on progress at the trust at a later date.”