The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust as good, following inspections carried out from November to January.
Two announced and four unannounced inspections were carried out at six of the mental health and community health services provided by the trust, as well as one unannounced inspection of an adult social care location, as part of CQC’s continual checks on the safety and quality of healthcare services.
Inspectors visited:
- Ashworth, high secure hospital
- Community health services for end of life care
- Wards for people with a learning disability and/or autism
- Forensic inpatient or secure wards
- Acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units (PICU)
- Community health inpatients services
- Wavertree Bungalow (adult social care location)
CQC also inspected the well-led key question for the trust overall as the trust now delivers services formerly run by two different trusts, and as part of a requirement for an external re-authorisation process for Ashworth, as a high secure hospital.
Following this inspection, the trust’s overall rating remains rated as good. The rating for being responsive also remains rated as good. Caring has improved from good to outstanding and well-led remains rated as outstanding. Safe and effective have dropped from good to requires improvement.
Three of the mental health services inspected were rated as good and one was rated as requires improvement. Two of the trust’s community health services were also rated as good. Wavertree Bungalow was rated as requires improvement.
Karen Knapton, CQC deputy director of operations in the north, said:
“During our latest inspection of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, we found a well-managed trust where leaders had a good understanding of current priorities and challenges and took action to address them to ensure people were receiving high quality care.
“We found the culture across the trust was centred around people’s needs and experiences. We observed staff caring for people in a kind and compassionate manner. Also, different services across the trust learnt from each other to embed areas of good practice in their own ways of working to improve the experience for people and staff.
“While we found many areas of good practice, we also found areas where the trust needed to make improvements, particularly around the environment. For example, the environment was in a poor state of repair at Windsor House, and the trust still provided some dormitory accommodation which didn’t ensure people’s privacy and dignity was protected. However, the trust is building a new hospital, which will have ensuite single bedroom accommodation and is due to be completed in Autumn 2024.
“We will continue to monitor the trust, in line with our ongoing checks of all healthcare providers, to support its continued delivery of high-quality care, and check improvements have been made where required.”
Inspectors found:
- Staff were proud of the organisation as a place to work and spoke highly of the culture. There was a strong organisational commitment and effective action towards ensuring that there was equality and inclusion across the workforce.
- The trust took a pro-active approach to managing staffing pressures and had a clear workforce plan in place. This included a focus on growing their own staff and the retention of existing staff, which saw trust turnover rates reducing at the time of inspection.
- The trust had clear and effective systems in place to provide assurance and escalate risk when needed. Performance was managed through clear structures and processes. Financial performance of the trust had been consistently strong and there were no examples of financial pressures compromising care.
- The trust had a structured and systematic approach to engaging with people who used services, those close to them and their representatives. The trust had access to feedback from people, carers and staff and were using this to make improvements.
- Individual staff and teams received awards for improvements made and shared learning. External organisations had also recognised the trust’s improvement work. The trust was actively participating in clinical research studies and in national improvement and innovation projects.
However:
- The trust was experiencing staffing pressures across most services as a result of high levels of absence and vacancies. This impacted on people’s access to therapeutic activities and on staff well-being.
- The trust was not always meeting its internal target in responding to people’s complaints and the quality of investigations varied, although work was being done to improve this.