Mental health services in Coventry and Warwickshire need improving - The Leamington Observer

Mental health services in Coventry and Warwickshire need improving

Leamington Editorial 8th Nov, 2017   0

NHS SERVICES for thousands of people suffering with mental health problems in Coventry in Warwickshire ‘require improvement’, watchdogs have ruled.

Problems include long waiting lists for children and young people to get treatment, and a lack of training in hospital wards for older people.

The lowly ‘Requires Improvement’ rating from the Chief Inspector of Hospitals has been handed to Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust.

But it says the latest inspectors’ report demonstrates it is continuing to improve after a difficult few years.




It follows visits by a team of inspectors from the Care Quality Commission in June this year.

The trust provides mental health services including at St Michael’s Hospital in Warwick, and community-based health services throughout Coventry and Warwickshire.


The CQC has rated the trust as Requires Improvement overall. It was rated as Good for being caring and Requires Improvement for being safe, effective, responsive and well-led. The trust’s previous rating was Requires Improvement.

CQC’s deputy chief inspector of hospitals (and lead for mental health), Dr Paul Lelliott, 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 has 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.

“Despite these concerns, we found a number of areas of good practice across Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust. Staff were kind, caring and respectful. We saw some services that went above and beyond to meet patient and carer needs. Patients and carers feedback was positive and highlighted the staff as a caring group.

“The trust had developed its approach to how patients were managed when presenting with challenging behaviours. The trust had developed person-centred positive behaviour support plans and had significantly reduced the number of patients who were restrained.

Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust’s chief executive Simon Gilby said: “This report shows that we have continued our journey of improvement since our last inspection, highlighting a wide range of good practice across all our services, with more services now rated ‘Good’ than in previous inspections. Our services continue to be rated as ‘Good’ for the care we provide.

“However, although the inspectors have concluded that more of our services now rated good compared to 2016, the overall improvement has not been sufficient to move from a Trust rating of ‘Requires Improvement’, which was recorded at our last inspection in 2016. This is a great disappointment to the Trust Board and our committed, caring staff.

“We have already started work on areas for attention identified by the CQC. This includes an area of immediate concern highlighted in relation to the monitoring of physical healthcare on our older adult wards. Work has also begun to address potential delays to triage for people awaiting initial assessment in our specialist mental health service for children and young people. This issue is now resolved, there has been no detrimental effect on patients’ overall waiting time for treatment, and with the service now back on track we triage referrals within one working day.”

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