- SERVICE PROVIDER
Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
This is an organisation that runs the health and social care services we inspect
Report from 6 November 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Forensic inpatient or secure wards
Our view of the service
Reaside is a medium secure unit for men provided by Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust. They provide assessment, treatment and rehabilitation to service users with severe mental health problems who have committed a criminal offence or who have shown seriously aggressive or threatening behaviour. The service accepts referrals of male service users with severe and enduring mental illness who require treatment and rehabilitation in a highly supervised and structured medium secure setting. The service is provided to people within the West Midlands region. There are 7 wards: Trent, Avon, Swift, Severn, Dove, Blythe, Kennet. Avon, Severn, Trent and Blythe wards are acute mental health wards. Dove, Swift and Kennet wards are rehabilitation wards. This was a responsive focused assessment following information of concern about safety on the wards, staffing and leadership of the hospital. We looked at 10 quality statements in the safe, caring and well led key questions. We found 3 breaches of the regulations in relation to good governance, treating people with dignity and respect and staffing. The provider's systems and processes had failed to identify, manage and mitigate some areas of risk. Audits and checks were not always effective in ensuring continuous improvement. Staff did not always respond to what people said and take action. The provider had not trained all staff in life support. In instances where CQC have decided to take civil enforcement action against a provider, we will publish this information after any representations and/ or appeals have been concluded. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.
People's experience of this service
Three people told us they did not feel safe there however, 6 people told us they did and knew how to raise concerns. One person said they sometimes felt scared. People said the staffing levels affected their leave which impacted on their rehabilitation and made them feel stressed. They said it also impacted on seeing their family if their escorted leave was cancelled and their vape breaks. Most people were involved in their risk assessments. People said that restraint was rarely used at Reaside. Some people said staff were kind and treated them with dignity. However, the environment meant that their dignity was not always respected when sharing bathrooms and toilets. Some people told us that their religious and cultural needs were not always met in relation to food and the multi-faith room was not always available for them to pray. People said they had raised issues at the Residents Council meetings about staffing and the environment but did not feel that action had been taken. This meant that they did not feel listened to.