- SERVICE PROVIDER
Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
This is an organisation that runs the health and social care services we inspect
Report from 14 January 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units
Our view of the service
The Trust failed to ensure the service consistently had enough staff to keep patients safe, to support patients to access all aspects of their care created unnecessary restriction on 'quality of life of patients and placed them at risk of avoidable harm. The service's culture was not consistently centred on the needs and experiences of patients, and staff told us they found difficulty forming relationships with patients due to staffing pressures. Patients were complimentary about the care and compassion provided by staff toward them and we observed staff caring for patients with kindness and compassion. Following our last inspection the Trust provided an updated action plan to manage staffing pressures and had a workforce plan in place aimed at growing their own staff and the retention of existing staff. Staff told us they consistently raised concerns with senior managers about safe staffing levels on the wards and they did not see significant improvements despite the Trust action plan. The Trust was experiencing staffing pressures across most services as a result of high levels of absence and vacancies. This impacted on patient’s access to therapeutic activities and on staff wellbeing. Care plans were not always individual to the needs of the patient. Systems and processes were in place so staff could report incidents and receive information about serious incident outcomes and learning from these. Ward managers had set up local communication processes to check staff were receiving important information, but told us they did not have sufficient time to read this due to staffing pressures.
People's experience of this service
During our core service inspections, we spoke with 7 patients. Patients in the acute and psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) services told us they usually felt safe and that staff treated them well, but there was not enough staff on the wards, which concerned them as there was no outdoor access and reduced opportunities for them to use outside space.