Archived: Essex Child & Family Wellbeing Services

Seax House is operated by Virgin Care Services.

The service provides families with free and easy access to local health services in the community; whether in a family hub, local clinic, school, community site or in a family’s home. We inspected children and young people’s services.

The service delivers the following areas of care: health visiting, school nursing, family health education, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, nursing for looked after children, parenting support, support for young people with special educational needs and disabilities, provides children, parents and school staff with information on specific health issues and support with any physical, emotional or developmental problems.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the short announced inspection on 16 July 2019

To get to the heart of children and young peoples’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The main service provided by this provider was children and young people’s services.

Services we rate

We rated it as Good overall.

• The service had enough staff to care for children and young people and keep them safe. Staff had training in key skills, understood how to protect patients from abuse, and managed safety well. The service controlled infection risk well. Staff assessed risks to children and young peoples, acted on them and kept good care records. They managed medicines well. The service managed safety incidents well and learned lessons from them. Staff collected safety information and used it to improve the service.
• The service provided dietary advice (including breastfeeding, weaning and enteral feeding), ill health and pain relief (teething, colic and post-surgery pain). Managers monitored the effectiveness of the service and made sure staff were competent. Staff worked well together for the benefit of children and young peoples’, advised them on how to lead healthier lives, supported them to make decisions about their care, and had access to good information. Key services were available seven days a week.
• Staff treated children and young people with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, took account of their individual needs, and helped them understand their conditions. They provided emotional support to children and young peoples, families and carers.
• The service planned care to meet the needs of local children and young people, took account of children and young people’ individual needs, and made it easy for people to give feedback. Children and young people could access the service when they needed it and did not have to wait too long for treatment.
• Leaders ran services well using reliable information systems and supported staff to develop their skills. Staff understood the service’s vision and values, and how to apply them in their work. Staff felt respected, supported and valued. They were focused on the needs of children and young people receiving care. Staff were clear about their roles and accountabilities. The service engaged well with children and young peoples and the community to plan and manage services and all staff were committed to improving services continually.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it should make other improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. Details are at the end of the report.

Heidi Smoult

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals