St Andrews Healthcare Northampton

Updated 8 May 2025

St Andrew's Healthcare is a registered charity specialising in the assessment, treatment and rehabilitation of people with psychiatric disorders, including people with developmental disabilities and challenging behaviours. The providers’ vision is to be the national leader in specialist mental health care.

St Andrews Hospital Northampton has five service divisions. These are:

• Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS),

• Autism Spectrum Disorder and Learning Disability Division (ASD/LD)

• Medium Secure Division,

• Low Secure and Specialist Rehabilitation Division, Acute and Psychiatric Intensive care units and

• Neuropsychiatry Division.

This assessment looked at services within the medium secure division. The Medium Secure Mental Health Division provides mental healthcare to adults (including older adults) males and females, across a spectrum of specialist mental disorders: mental illness, personality disorder, borderline or mild learning disability (where the patient is deaf or has an acquired brain injury), acquired brain injury, and mentally disordered people who are deaf. Care is provided to those who need the relational, physical, and procedural security of a medium secure unit, in line with the National Medium Secure Specifications from NHS England (170042S).

We identified some areas of concern under the safe, caring, and well led key questions which will require an action plan.

Updated 16 October 2024

We carried out an unannounced onsite assessment within the medium secure division of St Andrews Hospital Northampton. The onsite assessment took place on the 20 and 21 November 2024 and our off-site assessment activity concluded 6 December 2024. We carried out this assessment in response to cases and notifications of concern which had been raised in relation to patient safety, alleged poor attitude of some staff, high use of agency and low staffing levels. At this assessment we assessed a total of 21quality statements from the safe, caring, responsive and well led key questions. We rated the service as Requires Improvement. We found breaches of the regulations in relation to Regulation 18: Staffing, Regulation 12: Safe care and Treatment and Reg 10: Dignity and Respect. We identified some areas of concern under the safe, caring and well led key questions which will require an action plan. Patients and staff at all levels spoke to us about staffing being a concern. The service had a high level of vacancies together with a high use of non-permanent staff. Ward staff were not always available for patients, who told us that they had to wait for their needs to be met. We found that patients and staff did not always feel safe on the wards. Some patients told us that they had been subject to verbal and physical aggression. We were told that not all staff had protected patients from abuse and that there were concerns about a closed culture, particularly on Rose ward. Patients told us that they had not been involved in their care planning or risk assessment process, however, the provider shared the results of a provider au. We found evidence of blanket restrictions relating to access to hot and cold drinks and snacks. Staff were experiencing ongoing issues with the electronic prescribing system (EPMA) going offline, and staff did not follow the provider’s contingency plans . We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.

Updated 11 November 2024

The child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) at St Andrews hospital Northampton, has significantly reduced over time. The hospital has 2 CAMHS wards, but only one in use currently, which is Seacole ward. Stowe ward was closed at the time of assessment.

This onsite assessment of the CAMHS was undertaken on 27 November 2024. The off-site assessment concluded on 17 January 2024.

The assessment was prompted in part by notification of an incident to the CQC and feedback received from external agencies, including concerns about the menagement of risk. This assessment examined those risks.

The assessment examined 5 quality statements across 2 key questions; safe and well led. We found breaches of the regulations in relation to staffing. An action plan has been requested from the provider to address this.

Updated 16 July 2024

St Andrew's Healthcare is a registered charity specialising in the assessment, treatment and rehabilitation of people with psychiatric disorders, including people with developmental disabilities. St. Andrews Healthcare provides services on three main sites: Northampton, Birmingham and Essex. This assessment took place in Northampton, which had five divisions: child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), services for people with a learning disability and autistic people, medium secure, low secure and specialist rehabilitation, and neuropsychiatry. The last inspection of the neuropsychiatry division took place between the 18 and 20 October 2022. This was an unannounced inspection, triggered by the receipt of information, which gave us concerns about the safety and quality of services on one ward in this core service. The information of concern was received by CQC between July and September 2022. Our last comprehensive inspection of this service was in June 2016 and a follow up inspection in May 2017. The concerns received included the following: safe staffing levels and how incidents were safely managed, physical healthcare and care of the deteriorating patient. The overall rating for the inspection was requires improvement with safe and well led rated requires improvement. There was insufficient evidence available to rate effective. We looked at 23 Quality Statements across all 5 Key Questions.

This was an unannounced focused inspection of the neuropsychiatry division which was undertaken in response to identified risks. During the inspection we inspected all quality statements under safe, and well-led. We also inspected specific quality statements under effective, caring and responsive, which had been selected based on identified risks and concerns. This inspection was rated based on our findings.

Updated 16 September 2016

• Thornton ward is a locked rehabilitation unit for women.

• Ferguson ward is a locked rehabilitation unit for men.

• Spring Hill House is a locked facility rehabilitation unit for Women offering 23 beds.

Updated 7 August 2017

O’Connell North ward

O’Connell South ward

Compton ward

Updated 16 September 2016

• Sherwood ward is the psychiatric intensive care unit.