Shropshire Trust ‘requires improvement’

Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust has been warned that it needs to do better in four out of five key areas by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Having been deemed ‘requires improvement’ by the watchdog, only the trust’s care element received a ‘good’ rating, with inspectors noting the ‘kindness, dignity and respect’ of staff. However, the report did note insufficient numbers of suitably qualified and experienced staff in key areas - such as children and adolescent mental health services.

Among other areas needing improvement, the trust was criticised for not having a strategy for end of life care, while staffing and skill mix levels within the community nursing teams were not reviewed systematically and at regular intervals to ensure that the needs of patients’ were met.

Sir Mike Richards, CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals, said: “Our inspectors found that several improvements were needed at Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust but we also observed many areas of good care across several departments.

“There were insufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced staff to meet the needs of people using the service within the children and adolescent mental health service’s learning disability team.”

Jan Ditheridge, chief executive of the trust, said: “While the overall rating was requires improvement, many of our services and CQC domains were rated ‘good’. We know there is more work to do to achieve at least ‘good’ in some of our other services and we will use this report to continue to drive that improvement.”