Mental health services must improve

THE health regulator has told the NHS trust responsible for community mental health services in the region that it must improve.

The Care Quality Commission reduced its rating for the support, treatment and advice Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust provides for adults of working age from 'good' to 'requires improvement'.

The CQC said leadership of the service had also declined from 'good' to 'requires improvement' following the inspection, which took place in February but was published in May.

The safety of services also requires improvement, unchanged from the CQC's previous inspection, while ratings for the services' effectiveness, care and responsiveness all remain good.

The trust also requires improvement overall, says the CQC, a rating unchanged from the previous inspection.

CQC deputy director of operations in the South of England Serena Coleman said: "During our inspection of the trust’s community services for adults, we found deterioration in how well the service was being led.

"Our experience tells us that when a service isn’t well-led, this has a knock-on effect on the quality of care being received by people.

“These leadership issues were beginning to undermine people’s safety, as the service was unable to maintain improvements across some of the areas we looked at.

"For example while we saw improvements in how risks were being managed, we saw new issues with medicines management.

“We saw teams learned from when incidents occurred but didn’t share this learning with the wider organisation, meaning people experienced preventable incidents in other teams.

“However, the service offered a range of treatments informed by best practice and actively involved people in their care decisions.

"People also told us their care coordinators were brilliant and friendly."

A trust spokesperson said: "The CQC has acknowledged that our adult community mental health services remain caring and responsive, which is a testament to our staff during this challenging period.

"However, it is disappointing that the overall rating for the service has declined to requires improvement.

"We are committed to quickly bringing all areas back up to a suitable standard across every CQC domain."